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DANIEL STEELE 





THE 


Gospel of the Comforter. 


/ 


BY 


DANIEL STEELE, S. T. D. 


Recent Professor of Systematic Theology in Boston University. 
Author of “Love Enthroned,” “Mile-Stone Papers,” “Antinomianism 
Revived,” “Commentaries on Leviticus, Numbers and Joshua,” 

“ Half Hours with St. Paul,” “ Defence of Christian Per¬ 
fection,” and co-Author of “ People’s New Testa¬ 
ment Commentary,” and of “ Binney’s Theo¬ 
logical Compend Improved.” 



BOSTON: 


THE CHRISTIAN WITNESS COMPANY. 








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©e&icatorg. 

To My Two Dutiful Christian Daughters, 

Caroline Binney Steele 
and 

Mary Grace Steele, 
and 

TO ALL OTHER BELIEVERS IN CHRIST WHO ASPIRE TO A KNOWLEDGE 

of the Most Vital Christian Doctrine, 
and 

to a Realization of the Deepest Spiritual Experience, 
through the Abiding Comforter, 

THIS VOLUME 

IS PRAYERFULLY AND HOPEFULLY INSCRIBED.' 


















PREFACE. 


This book is experimental and practical rather than theo¬ 
logical. But since every scriptural experience must be based 
on the truth apprehended by the intellect, there should be a 
clear and scientific statement of this truth. Hence the first 
few chapters of this volume on the various offices of the Holy 
Spirit are filled with arguments in proof of His personality 
and divinity, after the style of the systematic theologians. 
The scriptural proof texts will be found in the notes. 

One of the favorable signs of the times is the increasing 
number of books on the Holy Spirit. Quite an extended 
examination of these recent volumes reveals in nearly all of 
them one obvious defect, the omission of the direct witness 
of the Spirit to the believer’s adoption into the family of God, 
and His agency in entire sanctification in this life. In guard¬ 
ing against these omissions, we ourselves may have omitted 
some important topics in a theme so vast as that which is the 
subject of this volume. If we have done so, we ask the for¬ 
bearance of the Christian public for our inadequate treatment 
of a theme which has occupied our thoughts during more 
than a quarter of a century. As we advanced the subject en¬ 
larged in our thought until we had transcended the limits of 
a single volume. For this reason a long chapter in eight 
sections on “Assurance Through the Spirit” has been reluc¬ 
tantly omitted. It may be the Lord’s will that my life be so 
prolonged as to enable me to expand it into a future volume. 
If this be so, in the words of St. Peter, "I will endeavor that 
you may be able after my decease to have these things always 
in remembrance.” 

P. S, 


Milton, Mass., Nov. 8, 1897, 



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CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER 

I. 

Names of the Holy Spirit .... 



PAGE 

i 

II. 

The Holy Spirit and the Trinity 



14 

III. 

Personality and Divinity of the Holy Spirit 



20 

IV. 

The Holy Spirit the Executive of the Godhead 



26 

V. 

The Work of the Holy Spirit before Pentecost 



32 

VI. 

The Paraclete’s Conviction of Sin 



39 

VII. 

The Paraclete’s Conviction of Righteousness 



48 

VIII. 

The Paraclete’s Conviction of Judgment 



52 

IX. 

The Pentecostal Attestation 



60 

X. 

The Gain of the Paraclete .... 



70 

XI. 

Praying to the Holy Spirit .... 



82 

£U. 

The Law of the Spirit ..... 



88 

XIII. 

Miracles of the Holy Spirit 



99 

XIV. 

The Spirit’s Work in Regeneration 



104 

XV. 

Christ our Sanctification through the Spirit 



118 

XVI. 

The Witness of the Spirit .... 



133 

XVII. 

Christ’s Two Receptions and Two Bestowals of the Spirit, 

*47 

XVIII. 

The Paraclete’s “Ecce •Homo ” in the Believer 



160 

XIX. 

The Holy Spirit and Conscience 



164 

XX. 

The Unity of the Spirit .... 



174 

XXI. 

Enlargement of Heart by the Spirit 



184 

XXII. 

Knowing the Spirit. 



190 

XXIII. 

The Freedom of the Holy Spirit 



202 

XXIV. 

The Testings of the Holy Spirit . 



211 

XXV. 

The Holy Spirit and Singing 



216 

XXVI. 

Preaching with Demonstration of the Spirit 



224 

XXVII. 

Walking in the Comfort of the Holy Spirit . 



255 

XXVIII. 

Spiritual Babes and Spiritual Men 



265 

XXIX. 

The Spirit’s Presidency in the Church 



270 

XXX. 

Dishonoring the Holy Spirit 



276 

XXXI. 

The Fulness of the Spirit .... 



294 

XXXII. 

The Spirit an Unclaimed Deposit 



299 

XXXIII. 

The Spirit as Rivers of Living Water . 



3°4 

XXXIV. 

The Extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit . 



308 

XXXV. 

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit 



318 

XXXVI. 

The Holy Spirit the Conservator of Orthodoxy 



325 


Appendix . . ..... 



349 



















































































. . 




























- 























































The Father’s Promise of the Spirit. 


I will pour out my Spirit unto you. Proverbs i. 23. 

I will pour out my Spirit upon thy seed. Isaiah xliv. 3. 
I will put my Spirit within you. Ezekiel xxxvi. 27. 

I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. Joel ii. 28. 


The Son’s Promise of the Spirit. 


How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy 
Spirit to them that ask him. Luke xi. 13. (This has been 
called the dawn of Pentecost.) 

I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Com¬ 
forter, that he may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of 
truth. John xiv. 16. 

The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost ', whom the Father 
will send in my name. John xiv. 26. 

When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you 
from the Father , even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth 
from the Father , he shall testify of me. John xv. 26. 

It is expedient for you that * I go away : for if I go not 
away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, 
I will send him unto you. John xvi. 7. 

When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you 
into all truth : whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. 
He shall glorify me : for he shall receive of mine, and shall 
show it unto you. John xvi. 13, 14. 

Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you. Luke 
xxiv. 49. 

Wait for the promise of the Father, which ye have heard 
of me. Acts i. 4. 

But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is 
come upon you. Acts i. 8. 





Theology without the Holy Spirit is not only a cold stone, it 
is a deadly poison. — Prof. Beck of Tubingen. 

The place given to the Holy Spirit in the heart of the most 
decided Christians is altogether out of proportion to that which 
it occupies in the Word of God. — Bishop Ryle. 

The Father and His unmerited grace, the Son and His ex¬ 
piatory sacrifice, have been much more studied in our day than 
the Holy Spirit, His person, His work, and all that new world 
which He creates in the heart. — Adolph Monod. 

Man is a vessel destined to receive God, a vessel which must 
be enlarged in proportion as it is filled, and filled in proportion 
as it is enlarged. — Godet. . 

The Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost descended into the 
temple of His apostles, which He had prepared for Himself, 
as a shower of sanctification and a perpetual Comforter. — 
Augustine. 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER I. 

NAMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

HE first name that is found in the Bible is Ruach 



1 Elohim, the Spirit of God. He moved upon the 
face of the waters. The word spirit literally sig¬ 
nifies breath. All nations express things immaterial by 
the use of the most subtile material representatives. 
The best symbol for the invisible, immaterial thinking 
agent in man is the wind or breath, that kind of matter 
which is the thinnest and has least of the grosser ele¬ 
ments. Says Martin Luther: “ They who desire to 
speak of God without these material envelopes strive 
to scald heaven without ladders. For it is necessary, 
when God reveals Himself to us that He should do this 
through some veil or kind of wrapper, and say, ‘ Lo, 
under this involucrum , or cover, you certainly grasp 
me.’” The Old Testament form of statement is not 
that God is spirit, but rather that he has the Spirit and 
sends Him forth out of Himself. 

This may have suggested to the thoughtful Hebrew 
that the Spirit is God and is a personality distinct from 
Him from whom He proceeds. 


i 



2 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


The only other Old Testament designation is the 
Holy Spirit. This occurs only in Ps. li. 11 and Isa. 
lxiii. io, ii. In the New it is very common. The 
adjective holy cannot be distinctive of the quality of 
purity which is not found in equal degree in the Father 
and the Son. Both are holy. Hence, as it is not de¬ 
scriptive of an attribute peculiar to the Spirit, we 
infer that it points to the peculiar office of the Spirit, 
in the redemptive scheme, to make men holy. The 
Holy Spirit, then, is the scriptural term for the Sanc- 
tifier , a term not found in the Scriptures as a designa¬ 
tion of the Spirit. Holy Spirit is a name in English 
preferable to Holy Ghost, for the reason that words 
like men flourish and decay. Ghost and ghostly were 
once dignified words, as “ ghostly adviser ” for spiritual 
adviser. But these words have become degraded so 
that it would sound strange to us and repulsive to hear 
the words “ the Ghost of God.” Hence we commend 
the American revisers for substituting uniformly Holy 
Spirit for Holy Ghost. 

When the time came for Christ to depart He intro¬ 
duced a new name to designate the Spirit whom He 
would send to continue His work — the Paraclete , a term 
used only four times in the four Gospels, and all of them 
in the consolatory address in John xiv.-xvi. and trans¬ 
lated “ Comforter,” strengthener, from the Latin con- 
fortare , to strengthen. In I John ii. i it is translated 
“ advocate ” and is descriptive of Christ, our intercessor 
in heaven. Paraclete is a Greek word signifying either, 
passively, the near called, as an assistant, monitor, 
teacher and guide; or, actively, the near caller, calling 


NAMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


3 


the believer near to God, or giving access to Him by 
inspiring confidence and strength. He is also called 
the Spirit of truth or reality, because He is the inspirer 
of revealed truth, which He makes blessedly real to the 
believer in Christ. 

Twice He is styled the Spirit of grace, since He is 
the dispenser of the divine favor to all men, either by 
conviction of sin in order to bless them by turning them 
away from their iniquities, or by imparting to believers 
spiritual life, witnessing to their adoption and perfect¬ 
ing their holiness. 

He is called also the Spirit of supplication because 
He teaches us how to pray and for what to pray; the 
Spirit of revelation because He reveals Christ to the eye 
of faith ; the Spirit of wisdom because He imparts wis¬ 
dom ; the Spirit of adoption because He certifies the 
believer’s sonship ; and the Spirit of Christ because He 
was sent by the Father through the mediation of the 
Son. He is called the Spirit of God because He is one 
with God in His nature. This leads us to the scriptu¬ 
ral proofs that the Holy Spirit is consubstantial with 
God and is a person. The two doctrines of the per¬ 
sonality and the divinity of the Spirit go together. The 
identity of God and the Spirit of God runs through the 
Holy Scriptures. Whoever the Spirit is, there is no 
distinction between Him and God, just as there is no 
distinction between the man and the spirit of the man 
(I Cor. ii. 11). 

In the description of the guilt incurred by an apostate 
from Christ to Judaism is found another phrase descrip¬ 
tive of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of grace (Heb. x. 


4 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


29). If this is not the irremissible sin, it is sin at its 
climax. The Son of God is trampled down with ruth¬ 
less scorn and hatred, His “ precious blood ” is counted 
as that of either an ordinary man or that of a guilty 
criminal. Then the description reaches the summit of 
wickedness, the sin of all sins, the irremissible sin —“ and 
insulted the Spirit of grace.” Most modern exegetes 
say that the Spirit is thus called because He is the gift 
of grace. But by referring to Zechariah xii. 10 we find 
the expression “Spirit of grace and supplication,” evi¬ 
dently implying that the Spirit is “ the source of grace ” 
and the inspirer of all true prayer (Delitzsch). He is 
the source of grace not only in His own person, but 
He is the channel through which the love of the Father 
and the grace of His Son are poured upon penitent 
believers. The importance of the Spirit’s office in 
human salvation cannot be overestimated. The Father’s 
love and the Son’s self-sacrifice in the scheme of 
redemption are ineffectual without the Spirit’s personal 
agency in applying the provisions of salvation. He is 
the appointed and indispensable almoner of the divine 
bounty and messenger of the King’s pardon. If a city 
has a bureau of charities, its poor who proudly refuse 
its help and rely on the general benevolence of the city 
government, and starve because of their folly, are no more 
unreasonable than are those who admit that they are 
sinners, but are trusting in the fatherhood of God for 
forgiveness, ignoring His bureau of pardon, through the 
mediation of His Son, as administered by His accred¬ 
ited commissioner, the Spirit of grace. Many Chris¬ 
tians who are almost destitute of spiritual strength 


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giYPlTiP<ilifei. „-„iw infill hwri 
r Mp » fl}gfl f .sfiRlpd |IJ tbfi IJ Spiwtj ( pfjytrutl^,, lllI < ^WhatuJ^ 
tr u th ? ”,,, Jesj^p i Ch^t ^cUned ,tp, ansyfey,, Bias's, qflPSh 
tion, not because^t^jisi^^p^filterma"t«Khi#ffiQVttijte 
define, but because the truth, -lpiostniftetfdpd, Jpyi.the ..splf-j 
ish Roman procurator had a moral eiqfnerjftijwhipht hp 
had no capacity to receive. Christ could makp^bhfifl 
eyes see, but He could not make a blind soul perceive 
while persisting in a course of sin. Moral truth can be 
apprehended only by an active moral sense in sympa¬ 
thy with it. To awaken this sense in dead souls was 
one part of the mission of Christ. The other part was 
to reveal the truth. “ To this end was I born, that I 
should bear witness unto the truth.” All saving truth 
is centred in His person. “I am the truth; ” not 
stract, but concrete, in the form of facts adapted,^ 
man’s faculties, or truths cast in a human mould. Tr,pth 
is conformity to fact or reality. Eternal happinp$£- 7 js 
in building on the granite of reality and laying eypry 
hewn stone by the plumb line of truth. There c^tl ,bp 
no other destiny for a character thus constructed, 7/ Efilt 
sin is a lie. The motive to the first human sip a 
lie. “Thou shalt not surely die.” All the wops},qf the 
human generations and eternities are serpents ppil^dipp 
in that delusion. Yet eternal well-being is^ 

Christ for every one of the serpent-deceived, fiaep i^h.Q 
will receive Him by faith. For spiritual realities 
address our physical senses, but our faith, *QnJy^, The 


6 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


gheat danger lies in the pleasing delusions of sin and 
cftfr proneness to embrace them in preference to sober 
truth. I do not compliment my race nor do I misrep¬ 
resent them when I say in the words of the great Amer¬ 
ican showman, “ Men love humbug and sham.” They 
delight in being beguiled and duped. This strange in¬ 
fatuation for what is false is what gives Satan his chief 
p + 6wer for doing harm. For no truly wise man wants 
tb foster illusions. They end in pain, and if persisted 
Iri they lead to eternal sorrow. No sane man ever 
Chose naked evil or pain as an ultimate end. He al¬ 
ways chooses what seems to him at the time a good, 
a means of happiness. The mind has the power to in¬ 
vest the chosen object with all the colors, of the rain¬ 
bow, though it be as black as midnight. The drunkard 
sees happiness in the cup where the serpent lies con¬ 
cealed. He could see the serpent if he wished. The 
worldling sees supreme good in millions of money, be- 
itig wilfully blind to the day just ahead when he would 
^?Ve it all for “an inch of time” in which to prepare for 
eternity. 

To dispel these illusions and break their power to 
d^coy men to eternal ruin the Son of God came into 
the world. He revealed the real good, which is His 
Father’s approval. His love is heaven. He disclosed 
the infallible standard by which to estimate things. 
Biit Jesus Christ, who is the incarnation of truth, has 
Withdrawn His visible presence from our world. How 
cUn He now help us to divest ourselves of delusions de¬ 
structive to our eternal blessedness? He has left a 
successor whose office it is to testify of Christ and to 


NAMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


7 


reveal Him and His standard of values to us. He takes 
of the things of Christ and shows them unto us. With¬ 
out His agency the absent Christ would be forgotten 
and His power to sway each successive generation keep¬ 
ing abreast of the ages would have been entirely lost. 
Even the memory of Him would have perished, as 
President Warren intimates in his hymn to the Holy 
Spirit: 

“ I worship Thee, O Holy Ghost, 

I love to worship Thee ; 

My risen Lord for aye were lost 
But for Thy company.” 

It is His office in respect to the truth revealed by 
Christ to make it real and vivid to men bewildered and 
seduced by falsehoods. Sinful pleasures sway them be¬ 
cause they are near and present. The Holy Spirit 
brings eternal verities near and makes them outweigh 
the vanities of this life. He supplies a new measuring 
rod, a sense of eternity, and convicts the soul of folly in 
neglecting its happiness millions of ages hence. He 
lifts every man at some point in probation to a mount 
of vision above the mirage, where, as Longfellow says, 

‘ 4 Uplifted the land floats vague in the ether; 

Ships and the shadows of ships hang in the motionless air.” 

In this golden hour the disenchanted soul freed from 
all illusions gets a view of realities unfolded by the 
Spirit of truth. Happy indeed is he if from that view 
his future life is conformed to those realities. Unspeak¬ 
ably wretched will he be if he comes down from this 
mount of vision unchanged in moral purpose, and sinks 
into the shadowy illusions of sin for the rest of his life 


8 


THE' &KWELM OF HI HIE O<?)MH0RTER. 


to pursue phantom pleasures and'to '^irisp bubblies 1 
smitten by the arrow of death, a forgotten reality.’«The 
most precious hour in a sinner’s life is this hour o’f dor- 1 - 
rect spiritual vision commonly spoken of as conviction 
of sin. Then it is that the Spirit of truth becomes the 
reprover by holding up to the soul two pictures, the 
dark reality of what it is,, and the bright possibility of 
what it still may be by being “ not disobedient to the 
heavenly vision.” But if the soul-refuses to obey and per¬ 
sists in this refusal till disobedience hardens into fixed¬ 
ness of character, there will sooner or later be another 
vision which will awaken remorse; by the dark reality of 
what is and hereafter must forever be will ever hang 
the splendid ideal of what it might have been , the most 
doleful words in the English language. Again, the 
designation Spirit of truth might have been translated 
Spirit of reality. He is thus called by Jesus because He 
works in human souls only through the instrumentality 
of truth. He regenerates only through Christian 
truth. Men are begotten children of God through 
the word of God. They are sanctified through the 
truth. The truth is the instrument; the Spirit is the 
efficient worker. The stability of the new life consists 
in having the “ loins girt about with truth.” Victory in 
warfare is through a vigorous wielding of “ the sword 
of the Spirit, the word of God.” When the Spirit con¬ 
victs of sin, He takes such religious truth as He finds in 
the mind and makes it vivid and real. Conviction is the 
distinct realization of the person’s lack of conformity to 
the requirement of the truth. There is no proof that 
the Holy Spirit .ever acts immediately upon the soul 


NAMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


9 


without the medium of some truth lodged in the intel¬ 
lect, affording light for the activity of the will. Suc¬ 
cessful preaching is by manifestation of the truth ac¬ 
companied by the demonstration of the Spirit. The 
failure of many preachers arises from their dependence 
solely on the saving efficacy of the truth without the 
Spirit’s office to make it real. There is a legend that 
the eloquent head of a monastery died, and that while 
his body was lying in state before burial one of Satan’s 
imps took possession of the corpse, raised it to seeming 
life, and preached an orthodox sermon through the 
lips of the dead abbot. The evil spirit returned to 
pandemonium and boasted of his exploit. When 
asked by Satan whether he did not run the risk of con¬ 
verting some soul by his orthodox sermon, he replied: 

“ Sire, do you not well know that orthodoxy without 
the unction of the Spirit never saves, but always 
damns? ” John Wesley asserts that an impenitent man 
may be as orthodox as the devil, who believes and 
trembles, but is not improved in character by his faith 
and his fear. 

Where the truth, the Spirit’s instrument, is only par¬ 
tially presented, His work is defective, as in the case of 
souls moved to a religious life by singing joyful hymns, 
as “ Sweet By and By,” and by a suppression of the * 
awakening truths of original depravity and the deserts 
of actual sin, the holiness of the law and the terrors of 
the Lord. Such fragmentary views of God’s character 
as exhibit only His fatherhood, concealing His unbend¬ 
ing justice in upholding the majesty of law in the pun¬ 
ishment of sin, limit the Spirit to the production of a 


IO 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


short-lived verdure on the stony ground. Nevertheless, 
the Spirit may find in some Pagans and Mohammedans 
truths of natural religion sufficient to inspire them with 
the fear of God and to make them His servants, but He 
cannot assure them of pardon and sonship to God till 
they have heard of Jesus Christ and have received Him 
by an obedient faith both as Saviour and Lord (John i. 
12). Such will be saved through Christ though they 
know Him not, but they can have no assurance of salva¬ 
tion till they have believed in Him. The Spirit gives real¬ 
ity to the Old Testament, the prophetic record, and to 
the New Testament, the historic record of Christ’s life. 
He impresses upon us the fact that Jesus is living and 
present — that He is what He was. His birth, His ser¬ 
mon on the mount, His parables, His miracles, His fare¬ 
well discourse, His high-priestly prayer, His words on 
the cross, to Spirit-illumined souls do not belong to a 
distant antiquity, but are perpetually as fresh as the 
morning paper. The Spirit telegraphs the Gospels 
across the chasm of centuries and millenniums as recent 
news from heaven. “ What are you so greedily read¬ 
ing, grandpa? ” said a child to a Bible-studying saint of 
four score years intently reading the word of God. 
“ News,” was the reply. To the spiritual mind Christ 
is present giving life to His words spoken eighteen hun¬ 
dred years ago. Thus He verifies His own promise, 
“ Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world.” Thus He makes His words spirit and life. 
Statesmen are present in the governments which they 
have founded. Thus Washington is present in the 
American Constitution, and Bonaparte in the Code 


NAMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. I i 

Napoleon. Authors are present in succeeding ages in 
their books. Thus Homer and Plato are marching 
down the generations. But the presence of Christ 
through the Comforter is entirely different. It is a real 
spiritual and personal presence, invisible to all, but felt 
by the truly regenerate. “ The Paraclete takes of the 
things of Christ and shows them to us. He shall testify 
of me.* He shall glorify me.” It is said that the per¬ 
sonal presence of Napoleon on the field of battle was 
equal to a re-enforcement of ten thousand men. But he 
could not be present in every battle of the French 
down the ages, for the allied nations caged him up in 
St. Helena, and death soon imprisoned him in the tomb. 
But Jesus Christ is present' to every tempted believer 
and in every Waterloo of His church, not as a hallowed 
and inspiring memory, but .a veritable personality, man¬ 
ifesting Himself to the loving heart. This is true be¬ 
cause the Comforter is emphatically the Spirit of Christ. 
To fail to realize this truth is not to have heard whether 
there be any Holy Ghost. We are to be on our guard 
against commingling the risen Son of God with the 
Spirit. They are distinct personalities while one in 
substance. The Spirit is the organ through which the 
Son now communicates with the believer and with the 
world. He is the revealer by whose activity in human 
hearts redemptive truth is transformed into knowledge 
in such a manner that faith becomes knowledge (Eph. 
iv. 13). The Holy Spirit is the channel of reality. He 
gives eyesight to the spiritually blind. He gives visi¬ 
bility, substance, color and weight to truths which are 
as airy nothings to the sense-imprisoned soul. Vague, 

* See Appendix, Note A. 


2 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


shadowy and unreal are spiritual truths to the carnal 
heart. The inward vision, the spirit of revelation (Eph. 
i. 17) is wanting. “ Whom the-world receiveth not, be¬ 
cause it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.” Granite 
realities indeed are gospel truths to him who has re¬ 
ceived the Comforter. The sordid earth and the shin¬ 
ing orbs are soap bubbles in comparison. The things 
that are seen are temporal and evanescent, and the 
things'that are not seen are changeless and eternal. 
Thus the Holy Spirit leads us up to that mount of vis¬ 
ion where we see things with God’s eyes, where the 
world’s reals become the believer’s unreals, and the 
things unreal to blind unbelief become real to open- 
eyed faith. The feet which press this mount will not 
be lured by mammon from ministries to the Master. 

“As by the light of opening day 
The stars are all concealed, 

So earthly glories fade away 
When Jesus is revealed.” 

The truly spiritual man, actuated by a motive power 
incomprehensible to the natural man, must appear vis¬ 
ionary and fanatical. He is like a train moving up a 
steep grade with no locomotive; a ship moving against 
wind and waves with neither sail nor oar nor engine; 
or a magnet uniformly pointing to the pole swayed by 
a power too subtle for our coarse senses to grasp. Yet 
it is a very shallow philosophy which* rejects the Para¬ 
clete and His work in the believing soul because the 
divine worker is invisible, and at the same time assents 
to the demonstration of Sir Isaac Newton that all the 
heavenly bodies are impelled by an invisible force called 
gravitation, and to the masterly argument of the great- 


NAMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


13 


est American mathematician, Prof. Benjamin Pierce of 
Harvard College, that all physical force originates in 
spirit. The last chapter of his “ Mechanics ” demon¬ 
strates the spiritual origin of force. How glaring the 
inconsistency of those who accept this conclusion of a 
spiritualistic philosophy in the realm of physics and of 
metaphysics, and in the realm of theology reject the 
revelation of a spiritual agent morally transforming be¬ 
lieving souls because of His invisibility ! 

Such people to be consistent ought to abstain from 
riding in an electric car, reading by an incandescent 
light, and communicating by an electro-magnetic tele¬ 
graph or telephone because the imponderable agent is 
invisible and mysterious. 

In attempting to awaken and call forth from the tomb 
dead souls, the great purpose of gospel preaching, it is 
a fatal mistake to neglect the Spirit of reality. The 
truth, however clearly unfolded and eloquently applied, 
will be no substitute for this grand factor in human sal¬ 
vation. Here again is the failure of much Sunday- 
school teaching and preaching which is evangelical in 
doctrine. It is unevangelical in spirit because it does 
not depend on the Spirit of truth to give vividness and 
reality to the gospel. The picture is thrown upon the 
canvas, but in the absence of the eye-opener who 
purges the film from blind eyes there is no vision. 
The day of judgment, heaven and hell are fables to the 
natural man till made solid realities by the Holy Ghost. 
Rhetoric is no substitute. Pyrotechnics are not power. 
They may fill the pews with admirers; they will never 
crowd the altar with penitents. 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE TRINITY. 

HE doctrine of the personality and divinity of the 



1 Holy Spirit is intimately connected with the most 
mysterious yet most practical fact of revelation — 
the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity of God. It is 
mysterious because it is above reason, not contrary to 
it, and lies wholly in the realm of faith. It is practical 
because it is inseparably involved in all true Christian 
worship and is the mainspring of all effective evangel¬ 
ism. It is fundamental because its removal from the 
Christian system subverts every distinctive doctrine. 
It protects all such truths, especially the exceeding 
sinfulness of sin and the efficacy of the atonement. 
Unitarians have been accustomed to say that philoso¬ 
phy sustains their denial of the Trinity. This is a great 
mistake. The latest utterance of philosophic theism is 
that the Unitarian conception of Deity is utterly inade¬ 
quate to preserve His personality and moral attributes 
from degenerating into naturalism and pantheism, and 
that the Trinitarian conception is the only effectual safe¬ 
guard against such an outcome and the only rock on 
which reason can securely rest. 

I will briefly show you the logic of this movement of 
modern philosophy towards Trinitarianism. The ad¬ 
vance movement of thought in this century, far from 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE TRINITY. 


5 


expelling the Trinity from its place in the mind of 
Christendom, has caused it to strike deeper root and 
grow with fresh vigor. This is the argument in a nut¬ 
shell : Love, the basis of all God’s moral attributes, can¬ 
not exist in that simplicity, that abstract self identity of 
the divine nature which is the essence of the Unitarian 
conception. Why? If God existed from eternity be¬ 
fore He created a person on whom His love could pour 
itself, He was from eternity having the active, diffusive 
principle of love in His bosom, the very substance and 
substratum of His being, with no object to love. This 
is unthinkable! Eternal love without a personal ob¬ 
ject ! Hence philosophy must either deny the existence 
of love in God, together with all its manifestations in 
the forms of holiness, justice, wisdom and truth, or sup¬ 
ply such an object from eternity. This first alternative 
divests God of all His moral attributes and takes us 
more than half way to atheism. The first verse of St. 
John’s Gospel supplies an object of the Father’s love 
before His first creative act: “ In the beginning [from 
eternity] was [not was created] the Logos, and the 
Logos was with God [face to face is the idea in the 
Greek], and the Logos was God.” This Logos became 
flesh, and while tabernacling in humanity had a memory 
which went back beyond the creation of the universe to 
“the glory which he had with the Father before the 
world was.” In these words of unsurpassed majesty, 
which no creature ever dared to use, we have an enlarge¬ 
ment and enrichment of the concept of Deity in striking 
contrast with what Phillips Brooks called “the meagre 
God of Unitarianism,” a simple, abstract unity, a mere 


1 $ 7 THE i GOSPEL. QE THE i COMFORTER. 

paujse.or primed farce.) Hence ,thq tnecdssit$h ofhatl Hast 
p,dualism .af, persons, in the (divine,nature to< sbsta)in-the 
completeness.,, of■: the.,idiv,ine(l life and character. /The 
Hew.Testament, reveals.,suah a duali&miland - -atidslithe 
Thyd.FersQmas essential, to the perfection lofifulborfoed 
divinity! i Hence we,see that the Trinity■ is<,noti aido^ 
trii|ie. i whieh ,basi been arbitrarily imposed (U<po<i> • faith 
hyM^tjetnal.auithanity,.overriding ir.ep$.on,.hut -iMifc one 
which seconds .with reason^! after, ki is,,revealed, ahd>lex+ 
plains and .sup ports Christian experience^ I Evedyi evan-t 
geJijcal believer i ,w,ho, .through faith! itl i Christ obyi: dhe 
ihuminaticn. ,and t impulse .ofI the,,Holly Spirit! >hd$n had 
conscious access,to,the, Father resulting. ,in Totfgivehiesg 
and cqmmun.ionnhas tested) the* dbctriite.Lof >the Tri-fiitiy 
ar^dr found,4t true.Ilts, deniersnjmustnreckon with! thb 
beattphiWsophy representing the,demands- of.<thbihighi 
est intehigience;; then (they musUcttnVlnce of-thein^stuL 
pendaus.4elusion thies millions! whew have I through faith 
in .they diyinq Christ experienced ithpn wltnpss. * of nthel 
Spiral attesting theimadoption. and assuring >theriil of-fOr-l 
g^yeniess. .r .But I every j growing. Christian. .verijfres *» the- 
trnthr.pf, the Trinity ever.yi day iojf I his' life. He comes! 
to n the., Father! through ithe > mediation J of I the«<S.c}nl and' 
receives, the. Hioly, Spirit las, the iComfotiter,*heHpdry guide!! 
light*,life,,andiwellspring,of joy,.just as! evfeny astnon<<b^ 
m#r proves the (truth,lof,the CoperiHicnn.itheoryi of the 
solar.,systqm by t usimg, it and .arriving! at> results exjperT 
mentally verified by the use of his telescope, .‘ > £ Through 
hjmj;[,Christ], wei,[Je)WS, ( and .Gentiles],,both have )«our» 
access, m one Spirit unto the Father! ”.(EphmL r8).,w... . 
. .The ,be^fc.statement,.of itjie,-.Scriptures ;about* God is' 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE TRINITY. 


1 / 


that He is one in nature with a threefoldness which we 
call personality, that He has a Son who is not a crea¬ 
ture, whose existence is grounded not in the divine 
will, as our existence is, but His being is grounded in 
the divine nature so that He has all the attributes of 
God. His sonship dates not from His human birth but 
from eternity, being the I AM before Abraham was born 
(John viii. 58, Revised Version, margin). The Spirit 
proceeds from the Father and the Son, having their na¬ 
ture; the Father is self-existent. The Son’s being is 
grounded in the Father, and the Spirit’s existence rests 
on the Father and the Son from whom He proceeds. 
The Trinity, dimly disclosed in the Old Testament, is 
clearly revealed in the New Testament after Pentecost, 
when the Third Person came with power as the suc¬ 
cessor of the Son in the administration of the kingdom 
of God on the earth. The succession, which is indi¬ 
cated by the words Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is a 
philosophical progress and culmination. God reveals 
Himlselffto -all men in His Son ; He communicates Him¬ 
self*|n<the-Holy!-Spirit to all who believe in the Son; 
H& r^vbaLs Hirtifeelff (to lidan’fc intellect that through it 
He mahk-transform the'lhdart aAd make'it a partaker of 
the-divine I natu re!, nbt'divine'as* Hb” iS ‘ dpJinb, bid holy 
a&lHd fis: hoiliy.n Thisl (succession alfe<b intim&tds the OPdbf 
of the-dispensations "unfolded on' the ,f &atth?('‘We* haYfef 
everyi reason 1 -to (believe ‘that' ‘the' dispbnsatibA of 1 ‘the 
Spirit-jsuthe lafc-t and .rriofet. ^bHoti^ bra lr of C’h’ristlihMtj/ 
on thfe‘4arth,nth^t>ltihe (secant! (coming 1 ‘taf'Christ-Will ‘be 
to judge. ibh«l world and wind* A p* human* history 'On'* f thte 
planet^ and<not-to*'inauguralte'thddispensation of CHrlstfS 


8 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


bodily presence again with its limitations to one place 
at the same time. We do not believe that the order of 
progress is to be reversed after reaching its climax in 
the dispensation of the Paraclete, who is to abide with 
believers forever. It is certain that faith in an invisible 
personality is a higher exercise and more blessed than 
faith in a visible manifestation. This is hinted at by 
the risen Christ to Thomas, “ Because thou hast seen 
me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not 
seen and yet have believed.” We are living in the best 
era for spiritual development which this world will ever 
see — the era of Pentecost. Let us make the best pos¬ 
sible use of it and profit by its wonderful privileges, the 
indwelling Comforter bringing the Father and the Son 
to abide in us forever. Just note the gradation of 
honor in respect to the dwelling of God among men: 
ist. One nation was specially honored when Jehovah 
made His dwelling in the midst of the camp and the 
pillar of cloud and of fire betokened the presence of the 
King of kings and the Lord of lords. 2d. God selects 
one human body and soul for His abode; for in Jesus 
dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And, lastly, 
we reach the climax, the whole Trinity dwelling in 
every true believer who evinces perfect love by unhesi¬ 
tating obedience. This eclipses all the millennial glo¬ 
ries this side of the glassy sea, the new heaven and new 
earth. Hence the reasonableness of our conclusion 
that the descent of the Holy Ghost is the completion 
of Christian theology, and His indwelling in the believer 
is the crowning honor and blessedness. “ In the person 
of Christ,” says Joseph Parker, “truth was outward, 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE TRINITY. 19 

visible and most beautiful; in the person of the Holy 
Spirit truth is inward, spiritual, all-transfiguring. By 
the very necessity of the case the bodily Christ could 
be but a passing figure, but by a gracious mystery He 
caused Himself to be succeeded by an eternal Presence, 
•even the Spirit of truth, which abideth forever.’ * 


See Appendix, Note B. 


20 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

I T may be impossible to give an exhaustive and ac¬ 
curate definition of personality as applied to the 
distinctions in the Godhead. The term “ person," 
borrowed from the stage as its Latin derivation shows, 
per and sonare , to sound through, or to speak through 
a mask, hence a character in a play, may not be the 
best word to denote these distinctions. Be that as it 
may, the Christian world has accepted it, and it is now 
impossible for any one man to displace it by a better 
word. As applied to a human being, it implies that 
the body is not the real man, but the spirit which acts 
through the material organism. Thus we infer that 
spirituality is one element of personality, which implies 
self-consciousness, intelligence, desire, moral discrimi¬ 
nation, identity and freedom of will. To these attri¬ 
butes of personality we may add power, or causality, 
which cannot originate in matter. The free agent in 
a limited sphere is a first cause. He causes his own 
moral acts. He is the sole creator of character. 

Now if we examine the Holy Scriptures we will find 
that these marks of personality are all applied to the 
Holy Spirit. This is not clearly seen in the Old Testa¬ 
ment, though when it is read in the light of the New 
it is manifestly there also. We know that there are 


THE* PERSONALITY* OF*'THE* '*HOLY * SPIRIT. f 2T 

,pieit$Qni(icaticins.of dualities* in iH&biiew'pdetry'hAd'th&t 
f Wisd.QR} isildescribield figuratively* hsl speaking add , act L 
^ng\as ,sl person, dwelling ^ith*»Crod/ifrbhn'»e^ertiit^, 1 abxi 
giving counsel tot Hin^rin.loreafttabai* But in thc-Gbspels 
and, J£pi$ltleis wei haveIno poebila flights "©>f th’d iMagina 1 
tiq>nj jbut.thexijnost simple- prose. >stiatembAt' • ofi'faetfe and 
truths* I “(There.is nb triaob.bf ipoetry in thfeUait ,l dfd j 
course.of Jesusi.iiYthq.eole.mh and* tefiderihbur' between 
the rBasch&l .supper* and the! agony in * tHe <-gaddeh,' whed 
H*e nought I • fid prepare* t^rlis« disciples «lfbi? '-the • sddneiss^ 
loneliness*,, dqspqin.and. fepriiwhkhl they -Would expert 
enco in a (few hoiirs..^. Then..He used ho«- dark? 1 parables*, 1 
no.^agua generalizations,. •uO'dblefulldle^iesr'- He>f3pbke 
plainly and definitely of anothdr*Comforted to -takd His 
place,/docthei same .Work that He* had doWe in-deathm^ 
and ..guyings*, and. \ that sHe • wbbld stay forever:^ 1 * Hte 
wfuildubei^ presenoe/Ja .person -whd* th'dUgh’jinvrsittte 1 
WQuld v be. really. (neareritto thenttMif He 1 had* ‘beteh/tte-’ 
cause. Hetwjoudd (be jin* them,. ntore-than cOrhpensatifig* 
for tdkfcwjthdraWal tofi Hid bodily 'form. Nef$ >th‘et J peK- > 
sonal pronouns relating.do, the* ! M©ly>Spirit m the^'fol- 1 
lowingcbrief. promise) d«! I will * pray) the 1 'Fatherland ^hb 1 
shall * give you. anbtheri I Paraclete, * that 1 he ' majM 

abidjei with yoru dorever^x even the-Sipiribof thitH ;.whomt 
the..Rather will eend in my nanhe.ywhdmdthe 'worldeaiW- 
n©t,receive,* because it Jmbwtth him-rtQtt *but»-}M -kiiow 
him i for he diweileth .with you. * He shall teach you hi! ■ 
t hi n g-s. i Count * the .times the masfcbline* personal pro 1 * 
noun is tiBeds hetand himb.^We are'aWare th&ti flrteumAi' 
spirit, -k ,grammatically neyter, but fr'ha9' , ftdnmefe!‘ur 
neuter signification when * applied tb^thb •Gomforter 1 


22 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


than it has when applied to man (I Cor. ii. n) and to 
God the Father (John iv. 24). Hence the pronoun 
relating to the Holy Spirit should never be it or itself 
as in Rom. viii. 16, rightly changed to himself in the 
Revised Version. In the words “ He shall glorify 
me,” by no just law of interpretation can personality be 
denied of the first word while predicated of the last. 

Says Dr. John Owen: “ It is impossible to prove the 
Father to be a Person, or the Son to be a Person, in 
any other way than we may prove the Holy Ghost to 
be so. For He to whom all personal properties, attri¬ 
butes, adjuncts and operations are ascribed, and to whom 
nothing is ascribed but what properly belongs to a per¬ 
son, He is a Person; and so are we taught to believe 
Him to be. Thus we know the Father to be a Person, 
and the Son also. . . . There is no personal property 
belonging to the divine nature that is not equally as¬ 
cribed to the Holy Ghost.” “ The Holy Ghost spake ” 
(Acts i. 16); “ it is not ye that speak, but the Holy 
Ghost” (Mark xiii. 11). The Paraclete speaks of 
Himself as having authority in the Church. “ The 
Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for 
the work whereunto I have called them.” In their 
journey Paul and Silas “ were forbidden by the Holy 
Ghost to preach the word in Asia.” The Holy Ghost 
made elders at Ephesus, “ bishops to feed the church 
of God ” (Acts xx. 28). Such verbs as these describe 
His personal acts. He teaches, comforts, guides, sanc¬ 
tifies, testifies, glorifies, distributes gifts as He wills, 
makes intercession and is grieved. . “ If a wise and 
honest man should come and tell you that in a certain 


THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 23 


country where he has been there is an excellent gov¬ 
ernor who wisely discharges the duties of his office, 
who hears causes, discerns right, distributes justice, 
relieves the poor and comforts the distressed, would 
you not believe that he intended by this description 
a righteous, wise, diligent, intelligent person? Could 
you imagine him to mean that the sun or the wind, by 
{heir benign influences, rendered the country fruitful 
and temperate, and disposed the inhabitants to mutual 
kindness and benignity; and that the governor is a 
mere figure of speech? It is exactly thus in the case 
before us The Scriptures tell us that the Holy Spirit 
governs the Church, appoints overseers, discerns, com¬ 
forts, strengthens and disposes all things according 
to the counsel of His own will. Can any man credit 
this testimony and conceive otherwise of the Spirit 
than as a holy, wise, intelligent Person? Can such ex¬ 
pressions refer to quality, an effect or influence of the 
power of God, who doeth all these things figuratively ; 
that He has a will and tmderstanding figuratively, is 
sinned against figuratively, and so of all that is said of 
Him ? 

“ It is true that some things peculiar to persons are 
sometimes ascribed to things ; as charity is said to hope, 
to believe, to bear; the Scripture is said to see and 
foresee, to speak and to judge. The heavens and the 
earth are said to hear, and the fields to be joyful, and 
the trees to clap their hands. But these ascriptions are 
only occasional , and a plain description of the things 
themselves is given us in other places. But as to the 
Spirit of God, the constant uniform expressions con- 


24 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


cerning Him are such as declare Him to be a Person , 
endowed with all personal properties.” * 

Our final proof of the personality of the Spirit is 
derived from the requirement of faith, which is the 
only door through which God comes into the human 
soul. The stronger the faith the larger the capacity to 
receive the divine guest. Faith attains its highest vigor 
when it grasps a personal object and not an abstrac-* 
tion, the blesser and not the blessing. God in Christ 
awakens faith in a higher degree than the attempted 
conception of an infinite Being boundless and vague. 
Faith culminates in its strength where it addresses a 
personal Father revealed in a personal incarnate Son 
and claims the personal Paraclete. Grace then flows 
into the soul in largest streams, in Mississippi’s and 
Amazons “ of living water.” Hear the testimony of 
a professor in Cambridge University, England :f “If 
reference to personal experience may be permitted, I 
may indeed ‘ here set my seal.’ Never shall I forget 
the gain to conscious faith and peace which came 
to my soul not long after a first decisive and appro¬ 
priating view of the crucified Lord as the sinner’s 
sacrifice of peace, from a more intelligent and con¬ 
scious hold upon the living and most gracious per¬ 
sonality of that Holy Spirit through whose mercy the 
soul had got that blessed view. It was a new develop¬ 
ment of insight into the love of God. It was a new 
contact as it were with the inner and eternal movements 
of redeeming goodness and power, a new discovery in 
divine resources. At a ‘ time of finding,’ gratitude 

* Dr. John Owen, “ On the Spirit,” Chapter III. 

t H. C. G. Moule, principal of Ridley Hall and author of “ Vent Creator." 


THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


and love and adoration gain a new, a newly realized 
reason and motive power and rest. He who with His 
secret skill, and with a power not the less almighty be¬ 
cause it violates nothing, has awakened and regener¬ 
ated the man, now shines before his inner sight with 
the smile of a personal and eternal kindness and amity, 
and is seen standing side by side, in union unspeakable 
yet without confusion, with Him who has suffered and 
redeemed, and with Him who laid the mighty plan of 
grace and willed its all-merciful success.” This testi¬ 
mony of Prof. Moule to a work of grace after regener¬ 
ation hinges on the condition of his getting a “ con¬ 
scious hold upon the living and most gracious per¬ 
sonality of the Holy Spirit,” a “ hold ” possible only to 
him who has already been born of the Spirit.* 


See Appendix, Note C. 


26 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER, 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE EXECUTIVE OF THE GODHEAD. 

F OR several years our mind has been laboring to 
invent some concise expression for the sum of 
all the offices of the Third Person of the Trinity 
in the transformation, sanctification and habitation of 
souls who fully believe in Christ Jesus. . At last Dr. 
Hodge has struck out with his die the very coin which 
our own mint has failed to stamp and contribute to the 
currency of Christian experience and theological dis¬ 
cussion. “ The Holy Ghost is the executive of the''/ 
Godhead.” This clear-cut conception and expression 
of the work of the Spirit is exceedingly beautiful be¬ 
cause it is indisputably true. Law emanates from the 
Father, mercy and judgment are committed to the 
Son, while the executive of both Persons is the ever- 
blessed Spirit. Here we have the three departments 
of government— the legislative, the judicial and the 
executive. Through the Holy Spirit the Father and 
the Son operate on human souls, reproving, regenerat¬ 
ing, witnessing and sanctifying. We now see how a 
person may honor the Father and in a measure the 
Son and yet fail of attaining the highest spiritual grace 
through a failure to honor the Holy Ghost, the blessed 
Comforter; just as a man may show all proper respect 
to the lawmaking and law-interpreting departments of 


THE EXECUTIVE OF THE GODHEAD. 


27 


our own government, and secure their action., and then 
miss his purpose at last by ignoring the last link neces¬ 
sary to its realization — the executive officer, without 
whose agency statutes and courts are ineffectual. We 
fear that there are many Christians who inadvertently 
fail in their tribute of respect, faith and worship to the 
Holy Ghost, regarding Him as an impersonal emana¬ 
tion or influence streaming from God, or as only an¬ 
other name for the Father, who can just as well without 
Him reach and transfigure their sin-stained souls through 
the blood of the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the 
world. 

To human reason this looks very plausible. But 
Christian experience, especially in its advanced stages, 
has proved it to be fallacious. We must believe in the 
Holy Ghost as an indispensable agent in the production 
of spiritual life both in its incipiency and in its fulness. 
There is a sense in which He is now the most impor¬ 
tant active factor in the production of Christian charac¬ 
ter. The work of the Father in the gift of the Son and 
the work of the Son in pouring out His own blood as 
a sin offering are completed past acts. But the work 
of the Spirit in each individual believer is incomplete. 
They very greatly mistake who suppose that He fully 
accomplished His mission to our world on the day of 
Pentecost, or at the farthest when He had inspired 
the last word of the New Testament, and that He then 
withdrew, leaving the Church under the reign of fixed 
spiritual laws. Such a creed as this chills the soul and 
deadens all the fires of faith and love. Let the entire 
Church come to a full realization that the Comforter 


28 


THE GOSPE-L OF THE COMFORTER. 


came to abide and that He is now descending in per¬ 
sonal Pentecosts as certainly and as demonstrably in 
the consciousness of every perfect believer as He did in 
the upper room in Jerusalem, then will the glory of the 
dispensation of the Spirit begin to be generally seen 
and “ the executive of the Godhead ” receive fitting 
honor. “ To have faith in Christ and not to have faith 
in the Spirit seems to be a great contradiction; yet we 
submit it for the judgment of candid inquirers whether 
this very contradiction is not strikingly exhibited in the 
case of almost all who profess to be followers of Christ. 
To know the Father, we must know the Son; to know 
Christ, we must know the Spirit.” * This is our privi¬ 
lege: “Ye shall know him. He shall testify of me.” 
We suspect that much of the repugnance among good 
Christian people to an instantaneous sanctification 
comes from a sort of a naturalistic view of the kingdom 
of grace left to the operation of fixed laws in the ab¬ 
sence of the King. They forget that the King has left 
in His stead a personal successor and vicegerent 
clothed with omnipotent power. “ The day of Pente¬ 
cost was a pattern day; all the days of this dispensa¬ 
tion should have been like it, or should have exceeded 
it. But alas ! the Church has fallen down to the state 
in which it was before this blessing had been bestowed, 
and it is necessary for us to ask Christ to begin over 
again. We of course in respect to knowledge—intel¬ 
lectual knowledge of spiritual things — are far in ad¬ 
vance of the point where the disciples were before the 
Pentecost. But it should be borne in mind that when 


* “ Love Revealed,” George Bowen. 


THE EXECUTIVE OF THE GODHEAD. 


29 


truths have once been fully revealed and made a part 
of orthodoxy, the holding of them does not necessarily 
imply any operation of the Spirit of God. We deceive 
ourselves, doubtless, in this way, imagining that because 
we have the whole Scriptures and are conversant with 
all its great truths the Spirit of God is necessarily work¬ 
ing in us. We need a baptism of the Spirit as much as 
the apostles did at the time of Christ’s resurrection.” * 
That was not a mere dash of rhetoric which fell from 
the pen of John Fletcher when he spoke of the Pente¬ 
cost as the opening of “ the kingdom of the Holy 
Ghost.” He has the signet ring of our glorified King 
Jesus, and reigns over the family on earth as the 
Son of man reigns over the family above. He has 
not shut Himself up as an impersonal force in the 
tomb of uniform law, but He walks through the earth 
a glorious personality, with the keys of divine power 
attached to His girdle and with the rod of empire 
in His right hand. He works miracles in the realm 
of spirit as did Immanuel in the realm of matter. The 
new Creator of the soul performs a greater work than 
the original Creator of man, inasmuch as the former 
works upon material which is capable of an eternal re¬ 
sistance to His plastic touch, while in matter there was 
no such antagonism. 

In that sublime formula of worship, the Te Deum Lau- 
damus , which has dropped from the lips of dying sires 
to living sons for fifteen centuries, there is found this 
sentence referring to the work of Christ in opening the 
dispensation of the Spirit, “ When Thou hadst overcome 


* “ Love Revealed,” George Bowen. 


30 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


the sharpness of death, Thou didst open the Kingdom 
of Heaven to all believers/’ To make the Church real¬ 
ize the presence of “ the executive of the Godhead,” 
there must be more praying in the Holy Ghost, more 
preaching with the demonstration of the Spirit, more 
singing with the spirit and testifying as the Spirit 
giveth utterance, with the attesting fruits of the Spirit, 
love, joy and peace. There must be more faith in the 
Holy Spirit as the greatest gift that men can wish or 
that heaven can send. We belie His presence when in 
our fruitless lives we present Him as a barren tree with 
no golden fruit to attract and feed hungry souls. This 
poor, blind world, which apprehends only sensible 
things, physical causes and effects, must be lifted up 
by the lever of sanctified character from the low plane 
of naturalism to apprehend the presence of the super¬ 
natural on earth, the standing miracle of Christianity — 
the Holy Spirit dwelling in human hearts and trans¬ 
figuring human lives. How glorious will be that era 
when the brief credo , “ I believe in the Holy Ghost,” 
has descended from the head into the heart of the 
Church, or has ascended from an intellectual assent into 
assured knowledge (John xiv. 17). Then, and not 
till then, will Jesus, the glorified Bridegroom, have the 
entire heart of His bride, for then will the -Spirit, the 
Bridegroom’s looking-glass, fully reflect His loveliness 
to her eyes as the chief among ten thousand. “ He 
shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and 
shall show it unto you.” How cheering the thought 
that this period of intense spiritual illumination and 
power is not fixed by the decree of God in the distant 


THE EXECUTIVE OF THE GODHEAD. 


31 


future, but that it may be inaugurated in our own day 
by a simple, all-surrendering faith in Christ’s promise 
of the Comforter. There are indications of the dawn 
of that returning day of Pentecost when the Spirit shall 
be poured out in His fulness upon all who “ know the 
exceeding greatness of Christ’s power to usward who 
believe.” The eastern sky has streaks of light betok¬ 
ening the sunrise of a day of power. Christians of 
every name, lone watchers on the mountain tops, now 
see the edge of the ascending disk, and are shouting to 
the inhabitants of the dark valleys below to awake and 
arise and behold the splendors of the King of day. 

Reader, the perfect restoration of the reign of the 
Spirit over the Church involves your personal co-oper¬ 
ation, the entire consecration of your heart, your vic¬ 
tory over the world, your crucifixion with Christ, the 
entire cleansing of your heart and the transformation 
of your body into “ a temple of the Holy Ghost, the 
habitation of God through the Spirit.” Are you ready 
to be nailed to the cross? By the “you ” I mean the 
old self-life. You should be willing to enter into that 
state of conscious deadness to self in which the great 
German reformer was when he said, “ If any one 
knocks at the door of my breast and says, Who lives 
here? I will answer, Not Martin Luther, but Jesus 
Christ.” 


32 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT BEFORE THE DAY OF 
PENTECOST. 


T HIS is an inquiry into an obscure subject, but 
necessary for the clear setting forth of His con¬ 
trasted work as the Paraclete. 

I. The conviction for sin does not seem to have 
been so pungent. Men were driven back from their 
apostasies by repentance, more through the scourge 
of divine judgments, wars, locusts, plagues, captivities, 
than by an inner sense of the exceeding turpitude of 
sin. 

2. The Old Testament conversion was a moral 
change wrought by the will of the penitent, influenced 
by the Spirit of God, rather than a new creation or a 
new birth. The very surprise of Nicodemus indicates 
that the idea of regeneration as a radical spiritual trans ¬ 
formation was unfamiliar to the Jewish mind. The 
predominant purpose may be changed from vice to 
virtue in reliance on divine help, as in the case of re¬ 
formed drunkards, without regeneration. This is our 
idea of conversion during the period of Mosaism and 
under the preaching of John the Baptist. To assert 
that John’s converts were spiritually changed is to de¬ 
clare that John lost in a few months more regenerated 
probationers for Jesus than Methodism ever lost in her 


THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT BEFORE PENTECOST. 33 

entire history of a hundred and fifty years. There are 
many Old Testament converts in our modern churches. 

3. There was no assurance of acceptance with God 
certified to the penitent soul, no witness of the Spirit, in 
fact no pardon, but rather the pretermission of sins, 
as Paul teaches in Rom. iii. 25, where he uses 7 rapeoic, 
passing by, for fyem?, forgiveness. 

4. Old Testament piety was characterized by bond¬ 
age, the New by freedom. Those who were as chil¬ 
dren under tutors and governors were made free by 
Christ, free indeed. For where the Spirit of the Lord 
is there is liberty, the dungeon doors swing open and 
the fetters fall. 

5. It naturally follows that there was no permanent 
state of reconciliation, because there was no permanent 
basis for it in an atonement made once for all and all- 
sufficient during all time. (See the Epistle to the He¬ 
brews, where the failure of the altar offerings to remove 
the consciousness of sin is emphatically announced.) 
There was, through the offerings, a temporary peace of 
mind attained, but no satisfaction concerning the whole 
standing of the sinner before God. Full pardon was in 
the future. O Israel, wait for the Lord. He will re¬ 
deem Israel from all his sins. The legal sacrifices of 
the sincere and penitent Israelite availed to maintain 
his corporate membership in the Old Testament cove¬ 
nant, and to secure an operation of grace; but still 
the Holy of Holies remained closed to him, and he 
was destitute of that knowledge of personal salvation 
without which he was not “ made perfect as pertaining 
to the conscience.” He could not attain that inward 


34 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


consciousness of perfect reconciliation with God and 
perfectly satisfied longings after salvation and that undis¬ 
turbed peace which is enjoyed by the genuine believer 
in Christ under the dispensation of the Comforter. 

6. There was no conscious indwelling of the Spirit 
in Old Testament saints because there was no new or 
spiritual man in which He could abide. Hence their 
experiences, with a few extraordinary exceptions like 
David, were sombre, not sunny. Outside of the Psalms 
and Isaiah there is little gladness and less exultation. 
The fruit of the Spirit is joy. They had not the tree, 
the abiding Comforter, how could they have the fruit? 
The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy 
in the Holy Ghost. They had in imperfection two 
thirds of the kingdom, ceremonial purity and legal 
righteousness, an intermittent peace, but to the joy of 
the Holy Ghost they were strangers because He did 
not dwell in their hearts. The notion of divine son- 
ship as conferred upon Israel as a nation, and then 
upon the anointed king, is found in the Old Testament. 
But the sonship of individuals is a glorious gospel prom¬ 
ise, the distinctive prerogative of believers in Christ. 
John i. 12: “To as many as received him gave he 
power to become the sons of God.” For this reason 
one such believer is greater than John, whose spiritual 
stature overtopped all the saints before him, even Abra¬ 
ham, the founder, and Moses, the lawgiver, of the Hebrew 
commonwealth. 

7. Of course entire sanctification except in a cere¬ 
monial sense was not enjoyed by the Old Testament 
saints. This could not be in the absence of the in- 


THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT BEFORE PENTECOST. 35 

dwelling sanctifier. This again is held up as an attain¬ 
ment in Messianic times. Ezek. xxxvi. 25-29: “ I will 
sprinkle clean water upon you.” In enumerating these 
defects in Old Testament saints I have spoken of them 
generally. It will be easy to find an exception to each 
point which I have made, as Enoch,who had assurance; 
David, the joy of forgiveness ; and Isaiah, who was sanc¬ 
tified by the symbolic coal of fire laid upon his lips. 
But the exception proves the rule. 

To the objection that I have given the Holy Spirit 
no eminent place in Old Testament experiences, I an¬ 
swer that He has all the place that can be assigned to 
strong outward influence, but not a conscious indwell¬ 
ing in the individual. In fact, the gifts of the Spirit 
before Pentecost were largely external rather than in¬ 
ternal, rather gifts than grace; such as skill to Beza- 
leel, prescience to the prophets, strength to Samson, 
valor and administrative ability to the Judges and the 
kingly instinct to Saul. After Pentecost there were 
outward gifts arbitrarily bestowed ; as charismata , dis¬ 
tributed by the Spirit severally to whomsoever He will; 
but the chief gift was the Spirit Himself permanently 
abiding in the soul as the sanctifier, the endowment 
of power, the wellspring of joy and the inspirer of 
all gracious dispositions. The graces of the Spirit, 
especially the grace that leads the choral procession, 
Love , are infinitely superior to all the outward gifts of 
tongues, intrepretation, healing, etc. 

The operations of the Spirit on the world at large 
and on impenitent Hebrews before Pentecost effected 
little more than to create a basis of responsibility. Few 


36 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

seem to have been savingly influenced. His striving 
with the sinners before the flood (Gen. vi. 3) was a 
signal failure, only one family being saved. Nehemiah 
(ix. 20) says of the vast host of disobedient Israelites 
in the wilderness, “ Thou gavest also thy good Spirit to 
instruct them, and withheldest not thy manna from 
their mouth.” They seem, like modern sinners, to 
have appropriated the manna, but to have rejected the 
instructions of the good Spirit, for only two or three 
adult men who left Egypt out of a million got into 
Canaan. We do not say that all except these failed 
to attain eternal life, for Moses is certainly in heaven. 
Nor is this failure a matter of surprise when we con¬ 
sider that the distinct mission of the Spirit had not 
begun, and that in pre-Pentecostal times He had very 
poor tools to work with — the light of natural religion 
in pagan minds and the types and shadows of Mosaism 
with which to move the Hebrew heart. But since the 
ascension He has had all the facts and wonderful reali¬ 
ties of the gospel of Christ. 

The distinctness of the Spirit’s work since the ascen¬ 
sion of Christ is apparent to all readers of the New 
Testament. Dean Alford is so impressed with this fact 
that he writes in capitals these words descriptive of the 
office of the Comforter, that it is TOTALLY DIS¬ 
TINCT from all His previous working. These are 
some of the characteristics of His mission: 

1. Distinct promise ; the Spirit of promise, the prom¬ 
ise of the Father. 

2. An instantaneous coming, an event as sharply 
defined in history as the birth of Christ. 


THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT BEFORE PENTECOST. 37 

3. Permanence; He came to stay, to abide forever. 

4. He enters into the interior personality of the be¬ 
liever, and dwells within him, putting the law of God, 
the law of love, into his innermost heart, the source 
and nutriment of a new life interpenetrating his soul 
in a manner as mysterious as the coexistence of the 
Trinity of persons in one divine nature. 

5. His whole work has a most intimate relation to 
the person of Christ, as if to hold up a mirror to re¬ 
flect the form of the invisible and glorified Saviour 
into the consciousness of the believer, affording a spir¬ 
itual manifestation of Christ. 

“ When I say that pious Jews and our Lord’s disci¬ 
ples before the day of Pentecost were strangers to the 
great outpouring of the Spirit, I do not mean that 
they were strangers to His directing, sanctifying and en¬ 
livening influences according to their dispensation. . . . 
Nevertheless they were not fully baptized. The Com¬ 
forter who visited them did not properly dwell in them. 
Although they had wrought miracles by His power, 
‘the promise of the Father ’ was not yet fulfilled to 
them. They would have been puzzled with such ques¬ 
tions as these: ‘ Have ye received the Holy Ghost since 
ye believed ? ’ ‘ Is he fallen upon you ? ’ ‘ Is the love 
of God shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Ghost 
given unto you ? ’ ‘ Is the fountain springing up into 
everlasting life opened in your breast?’ ... If these 
and like questions would have perplexed the apostles 
before Christ had opened His spiritual baptism and set 
up His kingdom with power in their hearts, we ought 
not to be surprised that professors who knew only the 


38 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER, 


baptism of John should ingenuously confess they 
‘ never heard there was a Holy Ghost [to be received] 
since they believed.’ Nor should we wonder if devout 
Jews and easy Laodiceans should even mock and say, 
‘ You would have us filled with new wine; ’ but ‘we are 
rich and increased in goods, and have need of noth¬ 
ing.’ ‘ The water of our old cisterns is preferable to the 
new wine of your enthusiastic doctrine, and our bap¬ 
tismal ponds to your baptismal flames.’ ” (Fletcher.) 


THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF SIN. 


39 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF SIN. 


A ND he, when he is come, will convict the world 
of sin.” Of what form of sin? Not of those 
social offences called crimes, violations of the 
precepts and prohibitions of the decalogue, the basis 
of the criminal code in all civilized countries. Human 
courts are competent to convict of crime. Nor does 
the Spirit convict of those injuries to ourselves known 
as vices, moral delinquencies not named in the Ten 
Commandments. Conscience is sufficient to convict of 
these, aided by self-love and self-respect. But human 
law and conscience combined cannot eradicate evil 
from the heart. Philosophy has tried it and failed. 
Poetry, especially comedy and satire, have ineffectually 
attempted to convict the world of sin in all past ages. 
They have chastised cutaneous sins, denouncing the 
drunkard, the glutton, the opium user, the fornicator. 
All these were self-condemned before the shaft of ridi¬ 
cule was hurled at them. Each of them could say: 

“I see the right, and I approve it too; 

Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.” 

But is not God’s law thundering from Sinai a suffi¬ 
cient witness to convict of sin? No, it never did con¬ 
vince the world that sin is evil per se, a thing to be 


40 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


abominated, to be abhorred and shunned because of 
its inherent hatefulness and unspeakable vileness. The 
divine law is effectual only as it causes sin to be dreaded 
and avoided merely because of the punishment which 
will surely visit it. There is needed more than an 
accuser and punisher of sin, a power which can not 
only probe and search the heart and turn it inside out, 
exposing to the sunlight all its loathsome leprosies, 
but a power which can effect a radical cure. The sin¬ 
ful heart needs a surgeon so sharp-sighted as to detect 
this deadly disease under all its disguises of euphonious 
names, and a physician so skilful as to apply an effect¬ 
ual remedy. That healer of the sinful soul is the di¬ 
vine Comforter, mercifully sent, not to torment the world 
by forbidding its pleasures, but to bless the world by 
turning it away from its iniquities. Sins of every kind are 
the fruit of an invisible root to which they bear no out¬ 
ward resemblance. This root is too subtile for human 
laws and courts to see. It requires anointed eyes. No 
human philosophy had ever found the sum and sub¬ 
stance, the poisonous essence of sin, in unbelief. How 
can this be the all-inclusive sin? Is not historic doubt 
respecting persons and events innocent and even com¬ 
mendable? To such questions of a shallow rationalism 
we answer that unbelief in respect to Christ is more than 
withholding intellectual assent to a historic record. It 
is ingratitude towards a Benefactor and Saviour, and re¬ 
bellion against a rightful Ruler, a refusal to bow the 
knee to the personal revelation of God. The cause of 
this unbelief is not intellectual, arising from a lack of 
evidences, but moral, arising from a- lack of willingness. 


THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF SIN. 


Christ is rejected because He lays the axe at the root 
sin, plants a hedge of thorns across the path of sinful 
pleasure, and kindles a consuming flame in the house of 
the worldling’s idols. The Holy Spirit convicts unbe¬ 
lievers of a lie when they pretend that their unbelief 
toward Christ is merely honest doubt. It is because 
faith in Him draws after it what is conceived to be the 
unpleasant obligation to obey Him, that they are unbe¬ 
lieving. In fact, the Greek Testament has but one 
word for unbelief and disobedience. In truth and 
verity, however boldly and persistently the world may 
deny it, the fact is that unbelief in respect to Christ lies 
in the will so corrupt that it hugs sin and will not let it 
be taken away by the Son of God, who came into the 
world and submitted to the shame and agony of the 
cross for this very purpose. Not all unbelievers are as 
honest as the African chief, Sekeletu, with whom David 
Livingstone met in his explorations. Says that great 
missionary: “ Sekeletu pressed me to name anything I 
desired, and it should be given. I explained that my 
object was to elevate him and his people to be Chris¬ 
tians. He replied, ‘ I do not wish to learn to read the 
Book, for I am afraid it might change my heart and 
make me content with one wife, like Sechele [a con¬ 
verted chief]. No, no, I want always to have five wives 
at least.’ ” Here is a frank admission that the difficulty 
in believing in Christ does not lie in defective evidence 
of His right to rule the heart and life, but in the pur¬ 
pose of the sinner to have his own way. Equally frank 
was that son of Abrahan, a Pole, who, when asked by 
,t j American Christian whether the Jews’ rejection of 



42 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Jesus, the Messiah, was because they would not believe 
or because they could not, spitefully replied, “ Ve vill 
not believe, ve vill not believe.” But gospel-hardened 
sinners do not have such candor. Instead of acknowl¬ 
edging the real obstacle in their own will, they devise 
some pretext, some Intellectual difficulty in the way 
of faith, with which they sophisticate -conscience and 
excuse their godlessness. 

The Spirit of inspiration teaches that the sin of unbe¬ 
lief denies God’s moral attribute of truth. “ He that 
believeth not God’s witness concerning his Son, that 
eternal life is in him [and in Him only], hath made 
him a liar” (I John v. 9-12). 

It is a favorite plea of those who reject Christ as their 
personal Saviour that faith is not in the province of the 
will, and that consequently we are not accountable for 
it as the pivot of destiny. But this falsehood is shown 
up by the Holy Ghost, who ever insists that the culpa¬ 
bility of unbelief lies in the fact that it is a wilful, obsti¬ 
nate and persistent aversion to Christ’s requirements. 
It is this activity of the Spirit in demonstrating the 
truth to every mind and conscience by showing the 
things of Christ , His divinity, His sinlessness, His con¬ 
descending love evinced by His self-sacrificing life and 
atoning death, that renders every hearer of the gospel 
accountable to the Judge of the quick and the dead for 
his acceptance or his rejection of Jesus Christ as his 
rightful King. “ He that believeth shall be saved ; he 
that believeth not shall be damned.” The -convicting 
debate which the Spirit carries on with the world has 
this surprising peculiarity: The momentous question of 


THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF SIN. 43 


eternal destiny does not turn upon man’s treatment of 
God the Father, but rather his disposition towards His 
Son. This is the sin which towers above all and com¬ 
prises all. “ Because they believe not on ME.” That 
is to say, the world did not believe in Him as God 
manifest in the flesh in the person of His only begotten 
Son, the appointed King and Redeemer of mankind. 
“For God, as He is in Himself, in the mystery of His 
own unapproachable being, as He dwells in the bright 
abyss of His own timeless eternity, before the glory of 
whose face the archangels veil their eyes, whom no one 
has known or can know except the only begotten Son 
and the Spirit who is one with the Father and the Son, 
can hardly become a distinct object even of faith to 
man.” It is only when He vouchsafes to come forth 
out of His absolute Godhood, in the person of His Son 
and of His Spirit, that He is pleased to make Himself 
known to men by these two divine witnesses, the rep¬ 
resentatives of His glory, without whom no creature 
could, know anything or believe anything about God. 

Underlying the Spirit’s argument in the inmost depths 
of the soul where character originates from free choice, 
is the doctrine of the supreme Godhood (corrupted 
into Godhead) of Jesus Christ. For if He were a crea¬ 
ture, the highest in the universe next to the throne of 
God (Channing), it would be a sin to trust in Him rather 
than solely in the Creator. The Spirit recognizes the 
supreme divinity and not the creaturehood of the Son 
of man, the Son of God. For this reason orthodoxy 
in all the Christian ages has emphasized and exalted 
that primary truth which Luther, after the theological 



44 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


errors of the dark ages, so fully apprehended and so 
lucidly proclaimed, that evangelical, saving faith is the 
ground of all good in man, and the want of it is the 
source of all evil. This truth the Spirit’s convincing 
agency always implies when He gives a clear perception 
of the deformity and damnableness of the absence of 
faith in Christ as the chosen state of heart. The Spirit 
demolishes all the subterfuges and excuses by which 
depravity endeavors to palliate unbelief and to white¬ 
wash the vileness of his ingratitude to Jesus Christ, his 
best friend and benefactor. 

Another truth implied in the Spirit’s conviction of 
the world is that present salvation and eternal life de¬ 
pend solely on faith in Christ for which there can be no 
substitute. By this declaration the pious, God-fearing 
pagan living up to his best light is not excluded from 
salvation. He evinces that he has the spirit of faith 
and the purpose of righteousness which are accepted in 
the involuntary absence of a knowledge of the historic 
Christ. He has engraven on his own character, through 
co-operation with the universal activity of the Holy Spirit, 
the imperfect outlines of the image of Christ, styled 
by Joseph Cook “ the essential Christ.” When the 
apostles demonstrated to the conscience of the Jews 
that there was salvation in no other name, not even in 
Abraham their father nor in Moses their lawgiver, they 
were convicted of the most stupendous crime possible, 
but not beyond the forgiving grace of their disowned 
and crucified Messiah. Great as was their first crime 
of murdering their King, their second offence of reject¬ 
ing His claims did not place them individually beyond 


THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF SIN. 45 

His pardoning mercy, if they would repent and believe, 
although it sealed their national doom. Their unbelief 
vitiated all their fancied righteousness sought from the 
law and rendered it detestable and all their sacrifices 
abominable to the searcher of hearts. They were pre¬ 
eminently guilty of unbelief. The temporal conse¬ 
quences to their nation manifestly confirm the assertion 
that it was the most heinous of all sins. The Spirit not 
only convicts unbelievers of wilful sin, but He also con¬ 
victs the regenerate of “ sin improperly so called ” 
(Wesley), a wrong state of the sensibilities lying back 
of the will. Even after the will has, through the new 
birth, been brought into the attitude of submission to 
Christ, there remain tendencies and propensities peril¬ 
ous to the spiritual life and antagonistic to the new 
principle of love to God which is now enthroned within. 
This rendered many of the Corinthians “ carnal,” so that 
Paul hesitated to call them “ spiritual,” though they 
were, “ as babes in Christ,” possessing a feeble spiritual 
life instead of that more abundant life which Christ 
came to impart. This lingering carnality, “the easily 
besetting ” or closely clinging sin, styled by Delitzsch 
“the indwelling evil,” was the force which was impelling 
many of the Galatians downward instead of upward; 
for, having begun in the Spirit, they were ending in the 
flesh. We must ascribe to the same cause that lack of 
perfect loyalty and perfect devotion to Christ in all of 
Paul’s band of missionary helpers in Rome, Timothy 
excepted, of whom the sorrowful apostle says, “For 
they all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.” 
By such a remark as this the apostle to the Gentiles 


4 6 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


does not de-Christianize those members of Christ’s body 
who are still actuated by selfishness. Rather he repre¬ 
sents them as weak and defective believers who have 
not yet submitted to a total self-crucifixion as.a pre¬ 
requisite to perfect love to Christ. Paul does not in¬ 
clude himself and Timothy in this class (Phil. ii. 19-21). 

A light estimate of sin is the bane of modern Chris¬ 
tian thought.* It is attended by a depreciation of the 
moral law. Since the law underlies the atonement, 
whatever lessens the majesty of the law detracts from 
the necessity and value of the atonement. Thus these 
fundamentals all suffer loss when one of them, sin, law, 
atonement, is discounted. To these three vital doctrines 
we may add the pardon of sin and sanctification, to¬ 
gether with eternal retribution. When one of these 
doctrines is undervalued, all are soon weakened. Says 
Principal Moule: “ A full, strong current of opinion in 
the professing Church of Christ runs at the present day 
directly against a grave, thoroughgoing doctrine of 
sin and its correlative truths of eternal judgment and 
of the unspeakable need of the atoning blood and of a 
living personal faith in the crucified and risen One. 
One would think that some earnest teachers had 
learned, by some other path surely than that of the 
Word of God, to look with temperate eyes upon sin as 
a phenomenon sure at last to disappear under long 
processes of divine order.” The final evanescence of 
moral evil is a pleasing delusion of liberalism which 
cannot endure the idea of sin as an eternal blot on the 
face of the universe. A careful, candid study of the 

* See Appendix, Note D. 


THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF SIN. 


47 


parables of Christ shows the human family in the day 
of judgment separated and sentenced to the opposite 
destinies of punishment and reward with no hint of an 
ultimate reunion. Moral evil as a finality under the 
government of omnipotent goodness is a problem of 
less difficulty than the permission of sin by absolute 
holiness. The argument which justifies the arbitrary 
non-prevention of sin will justify its sovereign non-ex¬ 
tinction. But we need no such argument. God has only 
one way for the extinction of sin, the blood of His Son 
presented by penitent faith. He will never crush sin 
with an almighty trip hammer, as Universalists desire; 
nor will He crush the sinner into nonentity to suit 
annihilationism. Hence final impenitence can have no 
other sequence than everlasting misery. Without any 
revelation Plato comes to this conclusion. His moral 
reason demanded it. Hence it is not unreasonable. 
What is the remedy for inadequate and superficial views 
of sin as a transient, cutaneous disease soon to be out¬ 
grown by the soul? Preach earnestly and persistently 
The office of the Paraclete as the convincer of the stu¬ 
pendous sin of unbelief toward Christ, of righteousness 
and of judgment to come. Liberalism can be cured 
only by the awakening truths of Christ’s gospel. No 
office of the Comforter can be neglected without moral 
disaster, which always overtakes those who advance 
beyond the New Testament in their fancied progress. 
“ Whosoever goeth onward and abideth not in the 
teaching of Christ hath not God ” (II John 9, Revised 
Version). 


48 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
HE Spirit’s conviction of righteousness — His exhi¬ 



bition of a perfect model of righteous human 


character — was as necessary for the moral recov¬ 
ery of fallen men as the conviction of sin. By the 
dark picture of what the sinner is, must be suspended 
the bright ideal of what he ought to be. This ideal no 
fallen man is able, without the Spirit’s aid, correctly to 
portray. He alone can photograph it upon the pre¬ 
pared tablet of the soul. Conviction of sin prepares 
the tablet. In the normal unfolding of the child there 
arises the ability to discover the distinction between 
right and wrong. But this moral sense is so drugged 
from childhood upward with the threefold opiates, 
selfishness, worldliness and fleshly-mindedness, that 
the soul has no conception of the high moral attain¬ 
ments for which it was created, and comes to look upon 
it as becoming and inevitable to desire sensual pleas- 
sures, to seek after them and indulge in them with 
only such limitation as self-love may suggest. The or¬ 
dinary course of education in all pagan families, and 
in many homes nominally Christian, is such as tends 
more and more to inflame the worldly and fleshly stimu¬ 
lants of action, more and more to draw the youth out 
of quiet meditation into the race-course of intellectual 


paraclete’s conviction of righteousness. 49 

emulation, athletic strife, business competition, or the 
whirlpool of sensual pleasure. The world is full of 
false notions of honor and false estimates of interest. 
Hence the natural man knows nothing of a perfect at¬ 
tainable righteousness. Study the moral character of 
the pagan gods of the most cultured nations; for here, 
if anywhere, we may find among the gods worshipped 
by these nations an expression of their highest ideals 
of righteousness. But we find on Mount Olympus 
among the gods of Grecian and Roman mythology 
only deified lust, deified hatred, deified theft, deified 
jealousy and deified bloodthirstiness. 

Nor is there anything in the best human philosophies 
in heathenism that can be safely held up as the pat¬ 
tern of perfect righteousness. Ignoring the fact that 
man at his climax reflects the image of his Creator, 
philosophy denudes Him of all the human virtues, piles 
up a lot of abstractions and negations powerless to 
purify and elevate human society, and then wonders 
that it is steadily sinking into the depths of hopeless 
moral degeneracy. 

Study the pagan poets, their epics and tragedies, 
their satires and comedies, and their lyrics also, and 
you will no longer express your surprise at Plato’s ex¬ 
clusion of the poets from his ideal republic. Instead 
of delineating the portrait of spotless righteousness, 
they glorify human vices, and with all the splendors 
of genius they so adorn the contentions and debasing 
passions of men as to incite to their imitation. 

Even in Christian lands some modern writers who 
reject Christ have gone back to paganism, and have 


50 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


raised from the dead the idea that might is right , a 
monstrous idea which was laid in its grave by Socrates 
more than twenty-two hundred years ago. But what is 
the Comforter’s irrefutable proof of the perfect right¬ 
eousness of Christ? He Himself answers, “Because I 
go to the Father, and ye see me no more.” The world 
placed Him between two thieves ; but God, who cannot 
err, has set Him between Himself and the Holy Spirit, 
far above all principality and power. Never was the 
righteousness of the world so contradicted as when He 
to whom Barabbas was preferred, was received by the 
Father amid the acclamations of all the holy orders of 
intelligences around His throne. The pure and per¬ 
fect righteousness of Jesus is now forever vindicated. 
“Despised and rejected of men,”yea, of all men, —for 
what the Jews, the best nation, did, all other nations 
would have done, — He has been received and adored 
by all the heavenly world. This is a sufficient proof of 
His righteousness. 

But how do we know that He has been thus re¬ 
ceived? It is true that no human eye saw Him after 
the cloud received Him from the sight of His upward- 
gazing disciples. It is also true that no angelic wit¬ 
ness of the reception and coronation has come down 
to this world and made oath to this glorious fact. 
But a greater witness has come down, and is now testi¬ 
fying to every human conscience that Jesus sits en¬ 
throned with His Father. This testimony is twofold: 
first, in the inspired gospel record where the fact stands 
undisputed ; and, secondly, in the heart of every hearer 
of the gospel, where the duty of penitent faith in Him 


paraclete’s conviction of righteousness. 51 

is urged upon the conscience as the first and greatest 
duty. It may be that “ the fulness of time” for which 
God waited before He “sent forth his Son” (Gal. iv. 
4) was the period required for the demonstration of 
the world’s utter inability to originate those moral 
ideals which could turn men from sin to righteousness. 
He waited till the Greeks, the most aesthetic nation, had 
reached the perfection of art in painting, sculpture and 
architecture; till the greatest orators had uttered their 
matchless speeches; till the greatest poets had been 
laurel crowned; till the greatest philosophers had ut¬ 
tered their “ divine peradventures,” and till all the 
leading ethnic religions had set up moral monstrosi¬ 
ties to be worshipped in their temples; till Greece 
amid the splendors of art was rotting in licentiousness, 
and till all-conquering Rome, on her seven hills burn¬ 
ing the incense of her adoration to Might, was pour¬ 
ing contempt on all the passive virtues, meekness, 
patience, forgiveness and philanthropy. Then God 
permitted His well-beloved Son to unite Himself with 
humanity, to present to all men the perfect model of 
character, and to teach every man the duty of repro¬ 
ducing that sinless character in himself. Then, as a 
crowning gift, to render the gift of His Son available in 
the highest degree, He sent down the divine Paraclete 
to assist man’s wandering eye to gaze steadfastly upon 
this divine and human model of holiness, and to steady 
his hand to copy the matchless beauties of that heavenly 
pattern. This was the second work of the Comforter, 
to convince the world of righteousness, because this 
too was a work which He alone could accomplish. 



52 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF JUDGMENT. 
UDGMENT is the sanction of law. Since Jesus 



J came not to destroy the law but to fill it full of 
meaning, His commission to the Paraclete must 
effect the same purpose to honor the law by declaring 
its sentence against sin. Says Tholuck : “ The meaning 
of our Lord’s words is, When the divine principle of 
the Spirit shall spread among my disciples and pro¬ 
duce its extraordinary effects in mankind, people will 
be forced to confess that the power of the evil spirit 
which opposes me in the ungodly feelings of men is 
broken. By the incarnation and coming of the Saviour 
an inward judgment was commenced in the hearts of 
men of which the last judgment is only the outward 
manifestation.” The atoning death of Christ declaring 
God’s abhorrence of sin and His mercy to sinners was 
the defeat of Satan, the usurping ruler called “ the god 
of this world.” Christ Jesus through death condition¬ 
ally emancipated every human soul from Satanic bond¬ 
age, and thus “ destroyed him who hath the power of 
death, that is, the devil.” 

But how can the casting out of “ the prince of this 
world ” demonstrate that every one who refuses to trust 
in Christ with true obedience and to seek justification 
through reliance on the atonement for sin made by 


THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF JUDGMENT. 53 

Him will be found on the left hand of the Judge and 
hear his own condemnation pronounced in the last day? 
Our answer is this: All who take on the Satanic char¬ 
acter must expect the Satanic doom; all who bear the 
devil’s image must share his destiny. So all who bear 
the likeness of Christ will share His glory. “ After the 
whole dilemma between sin and righteousness is clearly 
set forth, the Spirit finally announces the judgment of 
Satan in such a way that He not only comforts believ¬ 
ers with the perfect comfort declared in Rom. viii. 33, 
34, but also reproves unbelievers with that awful judg¬ 
ment, as a last sting, in their inmost hearts, Will ye then 
absolutely be and continue the devils ? Will ye bejudged 
with him?” (Stier.) Satan is condemned now for our 
benefit if we yield to the Spirit’s voice in our hearts and 
accept the righteousness which Christ provides and the 
Comforter inworks; or we abide with God’s great ad¬ 
versary in the judgment if we continue in sin with the 
world. This third and last conviction of the Spirit 
clearly implies that in the estimation of the Spirit of 
truth the existence of the devil must needs belong to 
some fundamental article of saving truth without which 
we cannot correctly estimate the enormity of sin, the 
value of righteousness and the necessity of the atone¬ 
ment by which it was procured. In this third convic¬ 
tion the victory of righteousness over sin is completed. 
In this our salvation is infallibly secured if we but will 
it. The Spirit never coerces a free agent. 

The discussion of the three convictions which the 
Paraclete effects in men, especially men who are en¬ 
lightened by gospel truth, shows in what way He glori- 




54 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


fies the Son of God. The first question is, Why does 
He not glorify the Father? He does. If the Father 
and Son are one in nature, as the Son asserts (John xiv. 
9), it follows that honors ascribed to the Son glorify 
the Father. “ He that acknowledgeth the Son hath the 
Father also” (I John ii. 23). There can be no jeal¬ 
ousy between them, because they are one in divinity, 
and in their distinct personalities they aim at one pur¬ 
pose in the scheme of redemption. 

The personality of the Son is much more easily 
grasped by men’s narrow minds, because it is divested 
of that vagueness and abstract infinitude which belong 
to our conception of God. Hence, the Son’s person¬ 
ality having been exhibited in a concrete form, within 
the limits of humanity, has become far more affecting 
and influential, when contemplated with all its historic 
incidents, lowly birth, poverty, youthful toil, kindly 
deeds, beneficent miracles, wise sayings, transparent 
parables, rejection by the Jews, arrest by the midnight 
mob, unjust condemnation, tragic execution and glori¬ 
ous resurrection. It is this historic setting of the Son’s 
personality which the Holy Spirit can use with the best 
effect in producing conviction of sin. The only element 
which we have failed to enumerate needful for this re¬ 
sult is assent to distinctive Christian truth, especially 
to Christ’s claim of supreme divinity. Truth separate 
from a sense of the authority of God does not convict 
of sin and spiritually vitalize man’s moral nature. Says 
Dr. Walker, “ Conscience will enforce no moral duty 
unless it sees God in it.” It will respond to no other 
voice than that of the moral Ruler and final Judge of 



THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF JUDGMENT. 55 

all free moral agents. So long as Jesus was regarded 
as a man only, His preaching had meagre results in the 
number of His disciples. But after His supreme divinity 
was demonstrated by His conquest of death, ascension 
to heaven and effusion of the Holy Spirit, men were 
converted by the thousands in a day. Like causes 
produce like effects in every age. Wherever in depen¬ 
dence on the Spirit of truth the whole gospel is 
preached, including Christ’s triumph over the grave in 
proof of His Godhead, unbelievers are convinced of 
sin, righteousness and judgment. But wherever Jesus 
Christ is presented as a model of moral excellence, but 
a mere man like ourselves, there is no conscience 
awakened to see the enormity of sin and to turn from 
it with a perfect loathing. Revivals can no more come 
from such preaching than orange groves can spring up 
and bear fruit among the glaciers of Alaska. Genuine 
conversions must be preceded by a painful sense of the 
enormity of sin, which comes only from the belief that 
Christ is the divine Saviour. This belief, though not 
saving, is the necessary stepping-stone to that all-sur¬ 
rendering reliance on Him as both Saviour and Lord 
which is the condition of salvation. It is not enough' 
to know Him historically as the Son of man. He must 
be known as the Son of God. This knowledge flesh 
and blood cannot impart. “ No man can say Jesus is 
Lord, but in the Holy Spirit” (I Cor. xii. 3, Revised 
Version). This gracious ability to arrive at a belief in 
the supreme divinity of Christ is imparted to all candid 
readers of the entire New Testament who have a dis¬ 
position to follow whither the truth may lead. It is not 



56 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


enough to read the first three Gospels. The sincere 
inquirer must proceed to the fourth if he would be 
convinced that the Son of man is also the Son of God, 
equal to the Father in power and glory. Then he will 
hear Him say, “All things [attributes] that the Father 
hath are mine : therefore said I, that he [the Comforter] 
taketh of mine and shall declare it unto you ” (John 
xvi. 15). Thus the Comforter glorified Christ by 
attesting His perfect power to save from the guilt of 
sin through faith in His blood shed as a conditional 
substitute for the punishment of sin. 

Then the Comforter, as “ the Spirit of adoption,” 
glorifies Christ as the Saviour by crying in the believer’s 
heart, “Abba, Father.” This inspired feeling of son- 
ship is the gift of Christ. “ But as many as received 
him, to them gave he the right to become children of 
God, even to them that believe on his name.” Thus 
the three divine Persons are glorified in the new birth 
of a soul. 

“ With joy the Father doth approve 
The fruit of His eternal love ; 

The Son looks down with joy and sees 
The purchase of His agonies ; 

The Spirit takes delight to view 
The contrite soul He forms anew; 

And saints and angels join to sing 
The growing empire of their King.” 

Again, the Paraclete glorifies Christ by inwardly 
revealing Him as the chief among ten thousand and 
the one altogether lovely. In that wonderful address 
respecting the coming and offices of His successor, 
another Comforter, in John xiv.-xvi., aptly styled the 


THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF JUDGMENT. 5 7 

Trinitarian Discourse, Jesus says respecting every dis¬ 
ciple who evinces the genuineness of his love by his 
obedience, “ I will love him, and will manifest myself 
unto him.” That this is not a spiritual phenomenon 
attending regeneration is evident from the fact that those 
whom Christ thus addressed were already regenerated. 
This is implied in His prayer in John xvii., appropriately 
called His high-priestly prayer : “ They are thine. . . . 
They are not of the world, even as I am not of the 
world.” Then He prays for a further work to be 
wrought in them : “ Sanctify them through thy truth. 
... I sanctify [consecrate to the one work of redemp¬ 
tion] myself, that they themselves may be truly sancti¬ 
fied.” With respect to these two future events, Christ’s 
manifestation to the believer and His sanctification, the 
inference is natural that the former is intimately con¬ 
nected with the latter as a means to an end. The mani¬ 
festation is by the Holy Spirit, the representative of 
Christ, who does not manifest Himself, but magnifies, 
glorifies, deifies the personality of the Son of God, for 
whom He is cleansing the heart as the temple of His 
everlasting abode. 

In entire sanctification the Holy Spirit violates no 
law of mental philosophy, but strictly conforms His 
work to the nature and faculties of the mind. The 
stronger affection expels the weaker. Drop golden 
eagles plentifully in the path of beggars scrambling for 
cents, and the awakened thirst for gold will cure the 
mania for copper. The superior banishes the inferior. 
It was Dr. Chalmers who eloquently discoursed on 
“ The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” To ex- 


58 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

pel all proneness to sin, all that is required is to inspire 
an unconquerable love of holiness, not in the abstract, but 
as embodied in a person in the sphere of the human 
affections, a person who by his self-sacrifice has laid in 
our minds a foundation for eternal gratitude. Then 
will this new affection instantly expel all base loves and 
keep them out so long as this new affection is enthroned 
within. Now it is the office of the Paraclete to inspire 
this affection. This He does by pouring light upon 
the person of the divine Christ, making Him a bright 
reality, a sun above the king of day, infinitely superior 
in splendors. This manifestation of Christ in the heart 
was an experience of Paul in addition to His revelation 
of Himself to the eye and the ear of the chief perse¬ 
cutor as he drew near to Damascus. The outward mani¬ 
festation arrested his career of hostility to Christ; the 
inward revelation awakened an undying love, the mo¬ 
tive power of that heroic course of labors, privations, 
perils and sufferings which ended when Rome’s impe¬ 
rial axe severed his head from his body. During all 
this period, as Chrysostom says, “ Paul had Christ 
speaking within himself.” Thus by deep inward reve¬ 
lations, as well as by outward manifestations, was the 
great apostle prepared, as every preacher should be, 
for the work of the ministry. Well does Bengel argue 
that the Son of God must first be revealed in the 
preacher before He can be revealed by him. This rev¬ 
elation of Christ in Paul’s consciousness was the sum 
and substance of that “ excellency of knowledge of 
Jesus Christ, for whom he suffered the loss of all things.” 
The time of this inward revelation of Christ by the 


THE PARACLETE’S CONVICTION OF JUDGMENT. 59 


Holy Spirit is unknown. The exegetes agree that it 
is not identical with Saul’s vision of the risen Christ, 
and that it must have occurred afterward, either in Da¬ 
mascus, in Arabia, or after his return from that country 
while sojourning in his native Tarsus. 


6o 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE PENTECOSTAL ATTESTATION. 


W E remark that Pentecost is the final, indispen¬ 
sable and standing attestation of the Lordship 
of Jesus Christ and of the truth of all His 
declarations. In other words, the gift of the Paraclete, 
not merely as a solitary event, but as a perpetual dis¬ 
pensation of grace and power, is absolutely necessary 
to the perfection of the Christian evidences. The res¬ 
urrection of Christ, according to Paul in I Cor. xv. and 
all Christian apologists, is the fundamental proof of 
His divine mission. It is my purpose to show that 
this greatest, miracle, taken by itself as an isolated 
event, without the standing and perpetual attestation of 
the Pentecostal dispensation as a predicted sequence, 
would have been insufficient for the establishment of 
Christianity against the universal opposition of Jews 
and Gentiles, including ten imperial edicts of persecu¬ 
tion and extermination beginning with Nero, A. D. 64, 
and ending with Diocletian, A. D. 313. Much less 
would it have been sufficient to perpetuate the gospel 
eighteen hundred years as a system dominating the 
world’s best thought and keeping in advance of the 
progress of the ages. We mean to say that the empty 
tomb without the tongues of fire descending from gener¬ 
ation to generation on Spirit-baptized believers would 


THE PENTECbSTAL ATTESTATION. 


6 


have been inadequate to the permanent enthronement 
of Christianity over mankind. If “ another Comforter” 
had not succeeded Christ, His mission, with all His mir¬ 
acles, including His victory over the tomb, would have 
been a failure, and His sermons and parables would 
long since have been forgotten. This idea is beauti¬ 
fully expressed in the first verse and the last of Presi¬ 
dent W. F. Warren’s hymn.* 

“ I worship Thee, O Holy Ghost, 

I love to worship Thee ; 

My risen Lord for aye were lost 
But for Thy company. 

“ I worship Thee, O Holy Ghost, 

I love to worship Thee ; 

With Thee each day is Pentecost, 

Each night nativity.” 

If the Paraclete had come to testify of Himself and to 
do an independent work irrespective of Christ, His mis¬ 
sion would not have conserved the memory of Christ, 
but would have eclipsed it. If He had come in the 
name of the Father to maintain the meagre unity of 
God in the bare and simple sense taught by so-called 
liberal Christianity, the outcome would have been the 
final oblivion of Jesus Christ following the denial of 
everything supernatural in His birth and ministry. 

But He proceeded from the Father and the Son spe¬ 
cially charged with the office of testifying of the Son, 
yea, of glorifying Him, not only in the gospel record, 
which He should inspire, and in the doctrines to be un¬ 
folded in apostolic sermons and epistles, but by His 

*No. 272, Hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 


62 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

indwelling presence in the consciousness of believers, 
revealing Christ in them in a manner wholly indescriba¬ 
ble but blessedly real and certain. We do not wonder 
at the tenacity with which western Christianity has 
insisted on the “ filioque ” (and from the Son) in the 
creed respecting the procession of the Holy Ghost. 
This enlargement of the creed not only conserves the 
dignity of the Son of God and harmonizes with His 
Trinitarian address in John xiv— xvi. and with other 
texts in which the Paraclete is called the “ Spirit of 
Christ” (Rom. viii. 9), the “Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 
xvi. 7, Revised Version) and “Christ” (Eph. iii. 17), 
but it is confirmed by the experience of all who testify 
that the Comforter “has taken up His lasting abode in 
their hearts.” (Alford.) These rejoice in a wonderful 
magnifying of Christ and in an inexpressible increase of 
love to Him. If troubled before by doubts of His di¬ 
vinity, their doubts are forever dispelled, and “ in the 
Holy Spirit” they gladly and spontaneously “say, 
Jesus is Lord” (I Cor. xii. 3, Revised Version). 
They are as sure of his Godhead as was Thomas in 
the presence of his risen Master when he exclaimed, 
“ My Lord and my God” (John xx. 28). A notable 
instance of deliverance from doubt on this fundamental 
doctrine of orthodoxy by the baptism of the Spirit 
occurred in the experience of Dr. Wilbur Fisk at Well 
fleet early in his ministry.* 

This intimate identification of the Spirit’s mission 
with the person of Christ and the success of His work 
was because in the wisdom of God it was seen to be 


* See his Life by Dr. G. Prentice. 


THE PENTECOSTAL ATTESTATION. 


63 


necessary to the establishment and universal spread of 
His kingdom. There is truth in the argument that the 
existence of the Church as the visible exponent of 
Christ’s kingdom is the great proof of the resurrection 
and divinity of its Founder. This is true. But our 
Contention is that the Church, which was not organized 
when Jesus Christ, its living head, ascended, would 
not have had a beginning on the earth without the 
Pentecostal gift. This idea has found expression in 
that beautiful and inspiring formula of worship, the 
Te Deum Laudamus , called by Canon Liddon “ at 
once a hymn, a prayer and a creed,” in these sub¬ 
lime words, “ When Thou hadst overcome the sharp¬ 
ness of death, Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven 
to all believers.” This dates the founding of the Church 
on the day of Pentecost. It was then that Christ, in 
the person of the Paraclete, like the sunrise described 
by the poet Horace, Altera dies , sol idem (Another 
day, the same sun), gathered together the Church 
of the firstborn of the Spirit on the earth, the first 
to receive the Spirit of adoption and to head the 
procession of redeemed souls through all the Christian 
ages. 

Without Pentecost the resurrection of Christ would 
soon have been confounded with the prodigies of the 
Greek and Roman mythologies. There would, after a 
few years or generations, have been no one interested 
in defending this historic fact, and after the death 
of the apostles there would have been no witnesses to 
the resurrection power as a transforming spiritual ex¬ 
perience. The historical facts without a spiritual life 


6 4 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


built on them, preaching and defending them and dy¬ 
ing for them a martyr’s death, would have had no 
champion to advocate them and to perpetuate the re¬ 
membrance of them. 

We do not read that the company of disciples was at 
all increased by the story of the resurrection of Christ 
repeated again and again during nearly fifty days. 
This bare historic fact made no converts. Facts alone, 
though miraculous, and truth alone, though undoubted, 
have no regenerating power. Only life can beget life. 
For seven weeks the company of believers had all the 
facts of the gospel except the ascension complete, and 
for ten days they had the climax, the ascension of 
Christ, but there was no increase of their numbers. 
But on the fiftieth day three thousand believed on 
Jesus as the divine Saviour. Something must have 
happened. There is no effect without a cause. In this 
hidden cause lies the secret of the final triumph of 
Christ. Let me illustrate. In the late American Civil 
War, in the absence of Gen. Sheridan, the Federal com¬ 
mander in the valley of Shenandoah, his army was un¬ 
expectedly attacked in camp and routed. They threw 
down their arms and ran like frightened sheep. This 
scared herd of soldiers without arms suddenly turned 
about, met and conquered the over-confident foe, re¬ 
gained their lost artillery and camp and drove Gen. 
Early and his Confederate army in a disorderly flight 
and captured his artillery. What caused the change 
from a disgraceful rout to a glorious victory? It was 
the sudden arrival of their valiant commander riding 
bareheaded at breakneck speed. What caused the 


THE PENTECOSTAL ATTESTATION. 


65 


sudden great victory of the gospel? What produced 
the conversion of three thousand in a day? It was the 
sudden arrival on the field of the divine Commander in 
the mysterious, invisible, conquering personality of an¬ 
other. It is vain to attribute the initial force of Chris¬ 
tianity to the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. You have 
first to account for his sudden transformation from a 
bloody persecutor. But he was not converted during 
the fifty days after the crucifixion. Even if he had 
been it would be as paradoxical to ascribe the first tri¬ 
umph of Christianity to the accession of a persecutor 
as it would be to attribute Sheridan’s victory, plucked 
out of defeat, to the presence of the chief of Gen. Early’s 
staff* rallying the running Federal soldiers to fight the 
army he had just deserted in treason to the Confederacy. 

In every generation there are needed living witnesses 
to corroborate the resurrection of Christ. For these on 
the witness stand of every age He has made provision 
in the gift of the Holy Ghost. “ Believers started to 
life when He did, and their resurrection is a triumph¬ 
ant proof of His resurrection.” On the day of Pente¬ 
cost the astonished Jews saw a hundred and twenty 
duplicates of the resurrection of Jesus. A feeble, al¬ 
most pulseless life they had before, but now they have 
a stalwart and abundant life. Every Christian who has 
had a personal Pentecost is a new attestation of the 
basal proof of Christianity, the resurrection of its 
Author. Every believer, if he lives at the summit of 
his privilege, is to an unbelieving world a risen Christ. 
O Spirit divine, multiply on the earth the number of 
such fac-similes of the resurrection of the God-Man as 


66 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


shall overwhelm the scepticism of the world and bring 
hosts of unbelievers to crown Jesus Lord of all! 

“ It is the vocation of every believer, in every gener¬ 
ation, to afford in his own person the evidence that 
Christ has risen. Art thou a Christian? Thou art one 
whom Christ has chosen to convey to men the proof 
that He is risen. This is thy vocation. Wilt thou roll 
back the stone upon the sepulchre and make the 
world believe that Christ is still there? This thou art 
actually doing if thou walk not in the Spirit.”* 

Pentecost is not only a convincing and perpetual 
proof of the Messiahship of Jesus, but it is also an at¬ 
testation to His righteousness. What was the world’s 
judgment of His character is shown in their crucifying 
Him as a malefactor between two thieves. Why do I 
say the world did this when only a few individuals out 
of hundreds of millions had any part in this appalling 
wickedness? Because the few were exponents of the 
many. Jesus was rejected not only by the Jews; “ He 
was rejected of men,” as He is to-day rejected by every 
natural heart. Majorities everywhere, even in so-called 
Christian lands, choose Barabbas and condemn Jesus of 
Nazareth, shouting, “ Crucify ! crucify ! ” His reputa¬ 
tion with men needed vindication, and Pentecost was 
that vindication. How? He declared that when He 
should go to the Father He would receive the promised 
Holy Ghost as the great gift which He would bestow 
upon men. John’s words imply that this gift could 
not be imparted before Jesus was glorified. Hence the 
effusion of the Spirit is a proof to all men that the de¬ 
spised and crucified Son of man has been received at 

♦ George Bowen. 


THE PENTECOSTAL ATTESTATION. 


67 


court, approved of his Father and crowned Lord of all. 
This is God’s justification set over against man’s con¬ 
demnation. Have we any Scripture for this? Listen. 
“ He will convict the world in respect of sin and of 
righteousness, because I go to the Father.” My recep¬ 
tion in heaven will reverse my rejection on earth. 
God’s approval outweighs man’s vilification. 

The Pentecostal gift demonstrates Christ’s omnipo¬ 
tence. Just before He stepped from God’s footstool to 
His throne He said, “ All power is given unto me in 
heaven and in earth.” No person can give what he 
does not possess.* To bestow a personality all power¬ 
ful is to possess all power. The Holy Spirit has all 
power. In creation He “ moved upon the face of the 
waters ” and “ garnished the heavens.” In Providence, 
by the Spirit, the successive generations are created and 
the face of the earth is renewed (Ps. civ. 30). The 
Spirit distributes nine extraordinary gifts, and among 
them “ the working of miracles” (I Cor. xii. 10). 

The gift of the Spirit by Jesus in the same way 
proves His omniscience, “ for the Spirit searcheth all 
things, yea, the deep things of God ” (I Cor. ii. 10). 
This text also proves the omnipresence of the Son of God, 
as does the fact that the Spirit in convicting the world is 
present with every soul as a reprover, and in uttering in 
the heart of every child of God, “ Abba, Father,” He is 

* Early in the nineteenth century there was an African pastor of a Methodist Epis¬ 
copal church in Boston whose name was Snowden. It was in the days of Channing, 
when the Unitarians were more Biblical than they are in modern times in the advocacy 
of doctrines, or rather in the indication of their negations. To this negro preacher a 
Unitarian pastor one day in a bookstore propounded this question : “ Father Snowden, 
what was the Son before the Father gave to Him all power?” Instantly this self- 
educated, or rather Spirit-educated Ethiopian replied, “What was the Father after He 
gave the Son all power? ” 


68 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


with every believing soul present as a Comforter. The 
personal giver must have all the attributes of the per¬ 
sonal gift. 

In the conclusion of this argument we infer from the 
identity of attributes of the giver and the gift that our 
opinion of the one must determine our opinion of the 
other. “ Tell me,” says George Bowen, “ what think ye 
of Christ, and I will tell you what you ought to think of 
the Spirit. Or tell me what ye think of the Spirit and I 
will tell you what ye think of Christ.” Unworthy, nar¬ 
row and vague opinions about the Spirit imply the same 
in your conception of Christ. Because the Spirit is prac¬ 
tically nearer to us, being the finger of Christ’s power, 
belittling views of the Spirit are more disastrous. 
“The Spirit in the believer testifies of Jesus, that He 
has ascended on high and that He is the Mediator be¬ 
tween God and man. The Spirit is powerful just 
according to the degree in which the believer yields 
himself to His influences and makes way for Him in 
his affection, in his intellect and in his life.” Are not 
heaven and earth waiting, groaning, travailing for such 
a testimony to the crucified and risen Saviour as has 
not yet been given in the Church on earth? To reveal 
Christ the believer is in the world and the Spirit is in 
the believer. Am I thus revealing Christ, His conde¬ 
scension, purity, love, unworldliness, meekness, all-suf¬ 
fering and unchangeableness, in every part and parcel 
of my life? Are my talents, tastes and opportunities 
made over to Christ to witness for Him? Only when 
the witnessing Spirit came down were the apostles, 
though brimful of ten thousand facts in the life of 



THE PENTECOSTAL ATTESTATION. 


69 


Jesus, able to testify to Him effectively. “ Modern 
Christians have enough materials stored in their minds 
to make thousands of discourses about Christ, but our 
lips are sealed and our lives ineloquent until the Spirit 
of Pentecost come upon us and make Christ’s truth 
live in us and shine through our transfigured lives.” 
(George Bowen.) 


70 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER X. 


THE GAIN OF THE PARACLETE. 


T HE withdrawal of the visible Christ and the substi¬ 
tution of His invisible presence in the Paraclete 
whom He sent was the introduction of His dis - 
ciples into a higher school of faith. Hitherto they had 
walked chiefly by sight. The miracles of their Master 
had appealed to their reason through the senses. They 
were not entirely destitute of faith, else they would 
not have forsaken their fish-nets and followed the Man 
of Nazareth. But their faith was weak; it needed to 
be exercised and developed by struggles in a far dif¬ 
ferent arena. They must be taught the spiritual nature 
of Messiah’s kingdom. The visible presence of Christ 
as a veritable man had been a help to the primary 
lesson they had already learned; it would be a hin¬ 
drance to the advanced lesson now to be learned. They 
must learn that deliverance from sin and restoration 
to true holiness consist not in outward ceremonials and 
prescribed rituals, nor in abstract truths grasped by 
the intellect, but in a vital union with a personal Saviour 
effected by the Spirit. While Jesus sat there before 
them in the body the mystery of this spiritual union 
was altogether beyond their comprehension. The 
enigma could be explained only by His removal. “It is 
expedient for you that I go away.” This expediency 


THE GAIN OF THE PARACLETE. 


7 


is strongly stated by Draseke as quoted by Stier: 
“ The old Messiah in the flesh is with them; therefore 
the new Comforter, the Spirit, is far from them. What 
hindered their being comforted? Jesus Himself, who, 
comforting, stood before them, was the hindrance. As 
long as He, this Messiah, bearing all the prophetic 
marks upon Him, stood before them in person, this, His 
person, continued to be a foundation and prop to that 
system of vanities which bewitched their heads and 
hearts. The form must pass away from their eyes 
before the Spirit could enter their souls. It was good 
for them that Jesus should go away. Before He, the 
Christ after the flesh, went away, the Christ after the 
Spirit could not come. When the former vanished the 
latter appeared.” 

The visible, tangible Messiah was the false foundation 
of all their erroneous notions about a splendid worldly 
kingdom. The ascension of Christ, the removal of His 
human form from the eyes of His disciples, was neces¬ 
sary to initiate a purely spiritual kingdom, the basis of 
which is faith in a risen and invisible Messiah enthroned 
in heaven. For the same reason the bodily absence of 
Christ will continue till He descends to judge the quick 
and the dead and terminate the probationary history of 
mankind on the earth. His reign as a visible king for a 
thousand years would be a long step backward. It 
would destroy the conditions of the development of 
that stalwart faith which Christ has pronounced specially 
blessed : “ Blessed are they that have not seen and yet 
have believed.” 

Again, it was expedient for Jesus to substitute for His 


72 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


visible presence the invisible Comforter for the emanci¬ 
pation of the Jews from “ the letter that killeth ” — a 
complex ritual which they had for more than fourteen 
centuries obeyed with a mechanical precision. This 
altar ritual, chiefly of bloody sacrifices typifying the 
atonement in Christ’s death, had accomplished its pur¬ 
pose and should now be laid on the shelf as one of “the 
beggarly elements”—a rudimentary and preparatory 
dispensation. Also the burdensome law of ceremonial 
purity, designed to lead a sinful nation up to the idea of 
spiritual purity, must now be abrogated because it had 
become a yoke upon the neck of an unspiritual people. 

How can this ingrained hereditary worship of “ the 
letter that killeth ” all joyful freedom of service be done 
away without destroying the religious spirit? Christ 
herein exhibits divine wisdom. He enforced no cere¬ 
monial law, nor did He formally abrogate any. But He 
inculcated the true spirit in which that law should be 
administered while the Mosaic dispensation should con¬ 
tinue. He did not command fasting, but corrected its 
disgusting ostentation, while intimating that it was not 
in harmony with His joyful gospel, but, rather, as incon¬ 
gruous as a new patch on an old garment (Matt, ix: i 5-17, 
Revised Version). He did not abolish bloody sacrifices, 
but prescribed the spirit of reconciliation in which they 
should be laid upon the altar. He knew that faith in 
His atonement would supersede the altar ritual without 
its formal repeal. He did not re-enact the law of tithes, 
but He insisted that while it continued it should be ac¬ 
companied by justice, mercy, faith and love. He sought 
to enthrone in all hearts supreme love to God as the 


THE GAIN OF THE PARACLETE. 


73 


sum of all duties toward God. Then He sends down 
the Spirit of love, who sheds abroad the love of God in 
the heart. This inspiration of the evangelical Spirit 
gradually overcomes the spirit of bondage to the letter, 
the legal spirit, first in Stephen, then in Saul of Tarsus, 
and then in the whole Gentile section of the Church, and 
finally in Peter and the believing Jews. Thus the whole 
Levitical law is quietly laid aside without a convulsion 
destructive of faith in revelation. To accomplish this 
amazing change it was necessary that the God-Man 
should retire and the God-Spirit should be His suc¬ 
cessor. 

It is quite obvious that Christ’s efficiency in His sav¬ 
ing contact with human souls is indefinitely increased 
by His representative, the Comforter. While on the 
earth in the limits of the body His range of beneficent 
effort must be restricted to a few of the many millions 
of mankind. His method was to individualize. In 
healing He laid His hands on every one. There was 
no healing in the mass. If men’s diseased bodies 
required individualization, much more do their depraved 
souls. Through the Paraclete the Great Physician can 
simultaneously medicate millions of sin-sick souls on all 
the islands of the sea and in both hemispheres wher¬ 
ever His gospel is preached. “ After the ascension, 
wherever there was a believer there was an omnipotent 
Christ. A thousand cities might simultaneously behold 
the displays of His power. On the day of Pentecost a 
thousand of the fiercest enemies of Christ laid down 
their weapons and proclaimed Him Lord to the glory 
of God the Father. The hearts of His own immediate 


74 THE gosfel of the comforter. 

disciples, so imperfectly subdued during His ministry, 
having been brought into complete subjection by the 
outpouring of the Spirit from the throne of their risen 
Lord, He went forth conquering and to conquer. It 
was sufficiently manifest then that Christ had all power 
in heaven and in earth.” (George Bowen.) 

But not only is the quantity of His work multiplied 
infinitely, but the quality is vastly improved through 
the mission of the Spirit. While in the body on the 
earth the work of reconstructing fallen human nature 
must be done from the outside, at a distance from the 
centre of personality within. But the Spirit can inter¬ 
penetrate the soul, impart spiritual life, and lodge the 
transforming principle in the very core of our being. 
Yea, He Himself, with my free consent makes my heart 
His domicile, His earthly holy of holies, thus imparting 
and conserving holiness at the fountain of action and 
character. This He can more effectually do than did 
Jesus in the flesh. For the Comforter does not take up 
His abode in my body merely, nor in my intellect, nor 
in any one of my mental powers ; but in my spirit, which 
He found as a mere unused capacity and filled with His 
subtle energies which stream forth, quickening intellect, 
sensibilities and will, chastening every bodily appetite, 
and in this way sanctifying the material organism 
through which my spirit acts. Not in what we know , 
but in what we are , does the Spirit take up His abode. 
Taking possession of the unexplored recesses of my 
spirit, the Holy Spirit, after my voluntary surrender and 
self-effacement, is in a position to inspire and safely 
guide me individually through all the perils and turning 


THE GAIN OF THE PARACLETE. 


;s 


points of my probation. Thus I am, through the 
Paraclete, on more intimate terms with the Lord Jesus 
than ever was “ that disciple whom Jesus loved ” and 
who leaned on His bosom. It is this spiritual privilege, 
this closer intimacy with God in His Son, that makes 
the least in the kingdom of God, the spiritual kingdom 
established on the day of Pentecost, greater than John 
the Baptist, even though he was greater than Abraham, 
the founder, and Moses, the lawgiver, of the greatest na¬ 
tion on earth in God’s eyes. Hence we emphatically 
indorse the strong declaration of Alford, especially his 
capitalized words : “ This ‘ the Comforter will not come 
if I go not,’ is a convincing proof that the gift of the 
Spirit at and since the day of Pentecost is something 
TOTALLY DISTINCT from anything before that 
time; a new and loftier dispensation.” 

The declaration that it was expedient, or “ good,” as 
Luther translates it, for Christ to go away in order that 
the Comforter might come, proves the fact that the 
work of the Holy Spirit is so indispensable a comple¬ 
ment to His own work that His bodily withdrawal, 
which is the condition of the Spirit’s advent, should 
awaken great joy in the hearts of His disciples. A few 
disciples, comparatively, had seen Him in His humilia¬ 
tion, rejected of men ; now One was to come who should 
be a mirror in which all disciples in all lands and in all gen¬ 
erations should see Him glorified, and, seeing, “should 
be transformed into the same image from glory to 
glory.” Without Jesus radiant with divinity, the Com¬ 
forter would have nothing to reproduce in the heart of 
the believer. “ It would be like removing from the 


;6 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


photographer’s studio the person whose features the 
sun is about to fix on the plate prepared to receive 
them.” 

The radical dissimilarity between the old and the new 
dispensation is seen in the following particulars : In the 
old dispensation the Spirit externally wrought upon 
men, but He did not in His person dwell in believers; 
His working was occasional and for a short time ; He did 
not permanently abide in them. He was external; He 
did not incarnate Himself in believers. His action was 
intermittent, irregular, and apparently without any law. 
He came and went like Noah’s dove, finding no abid¬ 
ing place. But in the new dispensation there is a “ law 
of the Spirit” by which all believers may receive Him 
as a permanent dweller in the heart, as another dove 
seen by John the Baptist descending upon Jesus and 
abiding on Him as a part of His person. In the Old 
Testament the Spirit bestowed gifts of an intellectual 
and physical nature — prophecy to the seventy elders, 
•skill to Bezaleel, the kingly feeling to Saul, and strength 
to Samson. But the Comforter dispenses the various 
graces, such as saintly inward virtues, love, gentleness, 
goodness, etc. “ Affianced of the soul, the Spirit went 
oft to see His betrothed, but was not yet one with her; 
the marriage was not consummated until the Pentecost, 
after the glorification of Jesus Christ.” 

Another great gain to the disciples in the exchange 
of the bodily presence of Christ on the earth for His 
spiritual presence in their hearts, by the Comforter’s 
coming and indwelling, was in the clearer evidence of 
his Messiahship and divinity. Doubtless the disciples 


THE GAIN OE THE PARACLETE. 


77 


at the first intimation of Christ’s intended departure 
asked of one another, “ What proofs can we hereafter 
point to that we have not followed a pretender if the 
great miracle worker removes? His amazing miracles 
have been our chief argument with our enemies hith¬ 
erto. Nothing can supply their place in even keeping 
ourselves from serious doubts. What shall we do?” 
Little could they possibly comprehend that an invisible 
divine Person could descend from heaven, enter into 
their very being, pouring a light more resplendent than 
the sun upon the person of Christ, giving an intuitive 
perception of His supreme Godhood as indisputable 
as any self-evident truth of the human reason. They 
knew nothing of the self-evidencing power of the Spirit 
to glorify the Son of God in their consciousness and to 
plant their feet for evermore on the sunlit summit of full 
assurance and certain knowledge so frequently spoken 
of by Paul under the strengthened word epignosis . 

The death of Christ was deemed by His disciples as 
the greatest possible disaster, but it redeemed a world 
of sinners lost. So the departure of their Master was 
deemed a privation for which they could imagine no 
compensation, but it removed the' barrier which kept 
Him from access to their inmost selves. Hitherto He 
had been imprisoned within walls of flesh obstructing 
the full communication of Himself to their hearts, just 
as the unbroken alabaster flask kept the delicious per¬ 
fumes from filling all the house, every crack and crev¬ 
ice, with its pervasive odors. 

When the God-Man was on the earth He was farther 
from His disciples, even when He washed their feet, 


78 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

than the sun is from the earth, 93,000,000 miles away. 
But when He came in the form of the Comforter this 
distance was annihilated. The disciples now have an 
eternal sunrise within their hearts. They are ensphered 
in the Spirit, who reveals Christ. They are enveloped 
in His personality; they are “ in Christ.” 

“ To have the Holy Spirit of God coming through 
the human nature of our Lord, entering into our spir¬ 
its, identifying Himself with us, and becoming our very 
own just as He was the Spirit of Christ Jesus on earth, 
— surely this is a blessedness worth any sacrifice, for it 
is the beginning of the indwelling of God Himself.” 

I am quite sure that many of my Christian readers 
will think that I have too highly colored the pre-emi¬ 
nent superiority of the conscious abiding of the Spirit 
within to the visible presence of Christ instructing, as¬ 
suring and cheering His disciples. They may assert 
that they have no such experience, and. yet that they 
love Christ. I do not doubt their testimony. The 
difficulty is easily explained. Their experience of the 
presence of the Holy Spirit is meagre and unsatisfac¬ 
tory, because they so little know and honor Him as a 
person. A person is sensitive when he is spoken of as 
it and treated as a thing. There may be a faith in 
Jesus that attains forgiveness, while a faith that claims 
the abiding Comforter as the Christian’s heritage is lack¬ 
ing. He that believes in Christ for all that He has 
promised, “ out of him shall flow rivers of living water.” 
This promise has not become obsolete. There are 
many modern witnesses to its fulfilment, though the 
number is not commensurate with the communion roll 


THE GAIN OF THE PARACLETE. 


79 


of the visible Church. Yet by a candid and patient 
study of God’s Word, the ground of faith, and by a 
self-surrender and self-effacement which put the soul 
wholly in the hands of the Great Physician with unwa¬ 
vering trust, the utmost stain of evil may be removed, 
and the presence of Christ be as real as it was to Mary 
Magdalene. 

There are many evangelical Christians who are rest¬ 
ing in a head-knowledge of Christ to the exclusion of 
that heart-knowledge which comes from the presence 
of the Paraclete. It is in a sense true of them that 
“the letter killeth,” while they might have the Spirit 
that giveth the more abundant life. The external 
knowledge of Christ is valuable; but it may be used 
as a bar to that intimate internal knowledge of Him 
who dwells only where He is welcomed'and enthroned. 
He comes to reign. Orthodoxy is commendable; but 
a trust in it and a reliance on the sufficiency of reli¬ 
gious knowledge may obstruct the fulness of the Spirit. 
A pauper may be told that he may take from the open 
treasury of Dives as much silver coin as he can carry 
in his hands. After filling his hands a bag of gold coin 
is poured out, and he is permitted to appropriate all 
that his hands can hold. If he has ordinary wisdom he 
will drop the silver and grasp the gold. Thus Paul 
dropped Judaism, not because it was untrue, but be¬ 
cause it was an obstruction to his appropriation of 
“ the excellency of knowledge of Christ Jesus.” He 
afterwards did what every Christian must do if he 
would realize the true, spiritual Christ within. When 
it pleased God “ to reveal his Son ” in Paul, some time 


8o 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


after his conversion, probably in Arabia while in his 
three years’ theological course under the tuition of the 
Holy Ghost, he ceased “ to know Christ after the 
flesh,” in contrast with knowing Him as a bright reality 
“ after the Spirit,” the source of ineffable bliss and 
transcendent life. 

Resting in the external knowledge of Christ attained 
on the plane of nature is a life akin to legalism, a life 
of effort and failure which must be abandoned to open 
the door for the incoming and indwelling of the 
Holy Spirit. Even the apostles trained by Christ “ had 
to let go, to lose, to die to their old way of knowing 
Christ, and to-receive as a gift an entirely new life of 
intercourse with Him.” This may account for the fact 
that there is so little reminiscence of the incidents in the 
earthly life of Jesus and even of His miracles in the 
Epistles of James, Peter, John and Jude, and scarcely 
any at all in Paul’s. What power would come to the 
Church if its members would imitate the apostles in ac¬ 
quiring this new, efficacious and transforming knowl¬ 
edge of Christ imparted by the indwelling Spirit! 
Doubt would then find no dwelling place. Worldly 
pleasures would lose their seductive ppwer. 

“ As by the light of opening day 
The stars are all concealed, 

So earthly pleasures fade away 
When Jesus is revealed. 

What a gain Christ intended the outpouring of the 
Spirit and His indwelling in the consciousness of His 
disciples would be in substantiating the -truth of Christ’s 
resurrection as an undeniable fact to the onlooking 


THE GAIN OF THE PARACLETE. 


8 l 


world ! Says George Bowen, “ Is not the great thing 
wanted this, that the Spirit of God should be so poured 
out on Christ’s people that men should be made aware 
of His presence with them and of His presence at the 
right hand of God?” The work of the Holy Spirit in 
my heart is God’s credential to me individually. All 
that Christ did for me profits me nothing if the Holy 
Spirit does not come into my heart and bring it all 
home to me. As Christ fulfilled and ended the cere¬ 
monial law, so the Paraclete is the complement of the 
gospel and the end of the “ law of sin.” 


82 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


‘ CHAPTER XI. 

PRAYING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

HE fact that there are only a few instances of 



1 prayer to the Holy Spirit, and these are only 
when He is named with the other Persons of the 
Trinity, has led some persons to refrain from praying 
to the Paraclete. But there are good reasons for the 
infrequency of prayer to the Third Person of the ador¬ 
able Trinity. 

When we take into consideration the disposition of 
the Spirit to conceal Himself in magnifying the Son 
and the Father revealed in the Son, and when we note 
the fact that the Holy Spirit is the inspirer of the 
Bible, it is natural that there should be a comparative 
silence respecting honors ascribed to Himself. He may 
purposely have omitted from the Acts of the Apostles, 
the Epistles and the Revelation, the record of the adora¬ 
tion of Himself by men and angels. This would have 
been in harmony with His mission to glorify Christ and 
not Himself. 

Again, to give prominence to His claim to be wor¬ 
shipped might interfere with our dependence on Him 
to suggest what we should pray for and to make inter¬ 
cession within us. “ If it is His special function not 
only to speak to and deal with, but also to speak and 
work through, the'man whom He renews and sanctifies, 


PRAYING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


83 


we can just so far understand that He the less frequently 
presents Himself for our articulate adoration.” Yet 
there can be no question of its rightfulness and pro¬ 
priety, inasmuch as His equality with the Father and 
the Son is assumed in the prescribed formula of bap¬ 
tism : “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost.” The form of benediction also 
implies prayer to the Third Person of the Trinity. 
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of 
God, and the communion [communication] of the Holy 
Ghost, be with you all” (II Cor. xiii. 14), is an act of 
adoration to the three alike. The same may be said of 
the blessing pronounced upon the seven churches in 
Rev. i. 4, where the perfection of the offices of the Holy 
Spirit is spoken of in the Hebrew idiom of sevenfold¬ 
ness. It is to be noted also that in this text the Spirit 
is not mentioned after the Son, but after Him whose 
name signifies “ he who is, and was, and is to come',” 
i. e., Jehovah. Says Prof. Moule, “ The believer’s re¬ 
lation to the Spirit is not so much that of direct adora¬ 
tion as of a reliance which wholly implies it.” 

The Scriptures ascribe divine titles and attributes to 
the Holy Spirit equally with the Father and the Son 
(Acts v. 3, 4; Acts xxviii. 25 with Isa. vi. 9; Heb. iii. 
7-9 with Ex. xvii. 7). 

The equality of the three divine Persons in unity is 
formulated in the Christian covenant and commission: 
“ All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 
Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations, bap¬ 
tizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt, xxviii. 18, 19). 


8 4 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Richard Watson, the standard theologian of Metho¬ 
dism for one hundred years, says on this text: “The 
form exhibits three persons without any note of superi¬ 
ority or inferiority, except the mere order in which they 
are placed. It conveys authority in the united name, 
and the authority is therefore equal. It supposes . . . 
faith, that is, not merely belief, but, as the object of 
religious profession and adherence, trust in each, or 
collectively in the one name which unites the three in 
one. It implies devotion to the service of each, the 
yielding of obedience, the consecration of every power 
of mind and body to each, and therefore each must 
have equal right to this surrender and to the authority 
which it implies.” (Institutes, Vol. I, page 635.) 

It should be borne in mind that all orthodox be¬ 
lievers must pray to the Holy Spirit when they pray to 
God. For the Christian concept of God is that in the 
one divine substance there are three subsistences, the 
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, or three Persons 
in the one divine nature. This may not be distinctly 
before the minds of some Christians when they pray. 
Nevertheless, prayer reaches its full evangelical devel¬ 
opment and efficiency in the consciousness that through 
the divine Son we have access by the one divine 
Spirit unto the Father (Eph. ii. 18). The treasures of 
devotion of the whole Church, the products of holy 
men who have composed petitions and hymns, contain 
invocations to the Holy Spirit, such as “ Veni , Creator 
Spiritusp 

“ Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire 
And lighten with celestial fire,” 


PRAYING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. 85 

and the “ Veni, Sancte Spiritus ,” thus in part translated 
by Ray Palmer: 

“ Come, Holy Ghost, in love 
Shed on us from above 
Thine own bright ray! 

Divinely good Thou art; 

Thy sacred gift impart 
To gladden each sad heart: 

O come to-day ! ” 

Since the Spirit, equal in power and majesty to the 
Father and the Son, is the agent by whom both touch 
believing souls and impart the wealth of their love, it is 
natural that He should also be the object of devotion 
and that His ministration of grace should be invoked, 
at least in impassioned ejaculatory prayer. 

Here we note an error in the Plymouth Brethren, who 
discourage prayer for the Holy Ghost because He was 
given once for all on the day of Pentecost. This error 
arises from overlooking two facts: 1. That the spir¬ 

itual capacity of the normal believer is ever increasing 
and needs an ever-enlarging fulness of the Spirit. It 
will not do to confound mechanical fulness with vital 
fulness. Dr. William Arthur’s illustration of the dif¬ 
ference between these is worth repeating. At evening 
fill two vessels with milk, an earthen pitcher and a 
healthy baby. In the morning you will find the pitcher 
full and the baby empty and crying to be filled again. 
The Christian is not an earthen pitcher which can be 
kept mechanically full, but a “ newborn babe desiring 
the sincere milk of the word, that he may grow 
thereby.” Hence the propriety of constant prayer for 
the Spirit to be more and more fully realized. 2. An- 


86 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


other fact not noted by the Brethren is the example of 
repeated asking and receiving of the Spirit even in 
Pentecostal days. On the first day after Christ arose 
the apostles received the Holy Ghost from the mouth 
of Jesus (John xx. 22), and after forty days they were 
in a ten days’ prayer meeting with one accord in prayer 
for the Holy Spirit in larger realization of His presence 
within them, as we infer from Peter’s sermon and its 
glorious sequel, the tongues of fire. 

The law of spiritual growth is by successive uplifts 
or baptisms of the Spirit. By a study of the Acts of 
the Apostles we find that the same persons who “ were 
all filled with the Holy Ghost ” (Acts ii. 4) were a 
few days or weeks afterwards, again in answer to 
prayer, “ all filled with the Holy Ghost ” (iii. 31). 

“ Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath ; 

We enter heaven by prayer . 11 

What is the object for which the believer prays ex¬ 
cept it be for an ever-increasing fulness of the Spirit? 

But did not Christ refer to the Holy Spirit when He 
said to the woman at the well, “ Whosoever drinketh of 
the water that I shall give him shall never thirst”? 
Yes, but the tense of the verb “ drinketh ” denotes con¬ 
tinued appropriation. If the Christian thirsts for any 
other water, it is because he has ceased to drink of 
Christ’s “ living water.” Says Bengel, “ Truly that 
water, as far as it depends on itself, has in it an ever¬ 
lasting virtue, and when thirst returns, the defect is on 
the part of the man, not of the water.” The life ema¬ 
nating from Christ must be constantly made our own 
anew. “ He that cometh [continually*] unto me shall 


PRAYING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


87 


never hunger; and he that believeth [uninterruptedly] 
on me shall never thirst ” (John vi. 35). Says Tholuck: 
“ The figure means, this water will once for all be re¬ 
ceived into the inner nature, will be immanent in man, 
and will attend him through every stage of his being, 
even to eternity. The need of an increase of this water 
is not thereby excluded.” 

The Holy Spirit, of which water is a symbol (John 
viii. 39), is as a river of life flowing from the Father 
and the Son (Rev. xxii. 1) into all hearts open skyward, 
and incessant prayer for the Spirit keeps our hearts 
thus open. “ How much more shall your heavenly 
Father be continually giving the Holy Spirit to them 
that constantly ask him.” 


88 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER, 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT. 

I N the Epistle to the Romans Paul speaks of the two 
laws or uniform and controlling forces — the law of 
sin producing spiritual death, and the law of the 
Spirit inspiring spiritual life which becomes eternal on 
the condition of persevering faith. In the thought of 
many people the Spirit is capricious in His action, and 
sovereign in the sense that He is a law unto Himself, 
observing no conditions and establishing no regular or¬ 
der of sequences by which His aid may be secured. 
Perhaps this error may be truthfully ascribed to that 
religious teaching which magnifies the sovereignty of 
God as exercised unconditionally. In some instances 
it may be traced to a misunderstanding of Christ’s com¬ 
parison of the mystery of the new birth to “ the wind 
blowing as it listeth.” He did not intimate that the 
winds are not under physical laws, but rather that 
science had not then, as it has not now, a knowledge of 
pneumatics sufficient to predict with infallible certainty 
what will be the direction and intensity of the wind an 
hour hence. Some infer that the Holy Spirit acts on 
men in promoting revivals of religion with the same 
uncertainty and apparent lawlessness. Hence revivals 
come to a church like thunderstorms, without regard to 
any human conditions. This idea is confirmed by a 


THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT. 


8c 


faulty translation of a sentence in Peter’s sermon m 
Solomon’s porch, Acts iii. 19, “ Repent ye therefore, 
and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, 
when the times of refreshing shall come from the pres¬ 
ence of the Lord.” This rendering of the text com¬ 
mands sinners to be ready for the blotting out of their 
sins whenever it may please God to send the times of 
refreshing. The correct rendering makes the times of 
refreshing or revival depend on the commanded human 
condition of repentance, “ Repent . . . that so there 
may come seasons,” etc. (Revised Version). In fact the 
Spirit is endeavoring to produce in every sinner peni¬ 
tence for sin and faith in Christ, in order that He may 
impart spiritual life and be God’s messenger of adop¬ 
tion, inspiring the joyful cry, “ Abba, Father.” This is 
the purpose for which He is reproving the world. He 
yearns to inspire in every human soul the gladness of 
the filial feeling in place of the dread and foreboding 
of punishment which haunt conscious guilt. He de¬ 
lights to take up His abode in the believer. His per¬ 
sonality interpenetrates ours just in proportion to the 
perfectness of our self-surrender. It is a wise remark 
of Dr. A. J. Gordon that the Spirit, like the wind, al¬ 
ways moves toward a vacuum. By entire consecration 
make your heart vacant of all love of the world, and the 
Holy Spirit will come in Pentecostal power and fill the 
vacuum. 

The reasons why so few are thus filled are various. 

I. Many do not know that this fulness of the Spirit 
is the privilege of all Christians. They think it is an 
exceptional experience of a favored few, “ the elect of 


90 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


the elect.” They think it is not modest to assume that 
they belong to this small company. This narrow view 
of the gift of the abiding Paraclete weakens faith. 
They dare not appropriate the gift which may not be¬ 
long to them, and so they fail to realize their full heri¬ 
tage in Christ. 

2. Others imagine that they must always have a 
propensity to sin, and that they must sin a little to keep 
them humble. As the fulness of the Spirit would not 
be consistent with depravity and occasional sins, they 
deem it not a normal experience, and abstain from ef¬ 
fort to receive it. 

3. Many fail because they do not know the law of 
the Spirit, the conditions by which He works His won¬ 
ders in human hearts. Till within a very few years the 
whole race of men failed to utilize a mighty force in 
nature, the power of electricity, to light, heat and trans¬ 
port men, move the world’s machinery and convey in¬ 
telligence with the speed of lightning under the seas 
and over the continents. As we look back upon it 
what a slow and sleepy world it was, simply because it 
did not know the law of electricity or the conditions of 
all these utilities. But men began to study and to ex¬ 
periment, conforming to the ascertained qualities of this 
mysterious agent and gaining more and more power to 
harness this tremendous force to the chariot of human 
progress. What new electrical discoveries and inven¬ 
tions are in the future we cannot tell because we have 
not reached the end of the chapter of electrical knowl¬ 
edge. John Wesley used to tell his people that as 
believers they were weak because they were not more 


THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT. 


91 


knowing. This is the cause of much of the weakness 
of modern Christians. They do not by day and by 
night study the law of the Spirit as Edison studied the 
law of electricity* in the production of light and the re¬ 
production of articulate sounds. Many nominal Chris¬ 
tians “ have not so much as heard whether there be 
any Holy Ghost ” consciously receivable by the indi¬ 
vidual believer in Jesus Christ. When by the diligent 
study of the Word of God they believe that the Spirit 
has a personal existence and that He stands at the door 
of their hearts and knocks, then they will be able to 
fulfil the conditions of His full incoming and permanent 
abiding. What hinders such a universal experience? 
Ignorance, unbelief, worldly pleasures, neglect of Bible 
study and prayer, satisfaction with mere formalism, un¬ 
willingness to be identified with the so-called spiritual 
extremists and cranks, and dislike to stand alone with 
Christ or to be crucified with Him. It is the law of 
the Spirit to enter in where the door is opened and He 
is cordially welcomed with His scourge of small cords 
to drive out everything which profanes the temple of 
the human soul and body. “ For the temple of God is 
holy, which temple ye are.” 

4. But some are not consciously filled with the 
Holy Spirit because He comes as a refiner and purifier. 
They are unwilling to submit themselves to this pain¬ 
ful purgation. They shrink from the crucible by 
which the divine Refiner sits till He can see His own 
perfect image in the mirror of molten gold purified of 
all dross. They admire the Son of God and desire to 
be conformed to His image, but they dislike the pro- 


92 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


cess of total and irreversible self-surrender and self¬ 
crucifixion. They cannot truthfully sing: 

u O that in me the sacred fire 
Might now begin to glow, 

Burn up the dross of base desire, 

And make the mountains flow ! ” 

God can do His perfect work in a soul only when 
the will is in the attitude of complete, trustful sub¬ 
mission. Only when the will thus bows to God’s will 
does faith in His promises mount up to its climax. 
For this Paul prayed, “that ye may know what is the 
exceeding greatness of his power to usward who be¬ 
lieve.” Then he adds the measure of that power which 
stands ready to transfigure believers, “according to the 
working of his mighty power, which he wrought in 
Christ when he raised him from the dead.” The 
greatest miracle in the universe, the miracle attested 
by men, by angels and by God, is the resurrection of 
His Son. Even the creation of the world was not so 
striking an exhibition of omnipotence. Yet Paul as¬ 
sures us that the same resurrection power in “ its ex¬ 
ceeding greatness” stands ready to work its wonders 
in “ us who believe ” with that faith which appropriates 
the largest promises of God. This highest upreaching 
of faith is possible only to the deepest submission of 
the human will. To this point of entire self-surrender 
every believer has the gracious ability to descend with¬ 
out the incentive of outward adversities, losses, be¬ 
reavements. disappointments, persecutions and bodily 
afflictions. These, as in the case of Job, are necessary 
to the revelation to the world of our perfect trust, loy- 


THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT. 


93 


alty and submission to God, but not to the production 
of these virtues. Many have had the spirit of the 
martyrs who were never led to the stake. The axe 
and block were once deemed necessary to Christian 
perfection. But this is a mistake. God takes the will 
for the deed. We can climb to as high spiritual alti¬ 
tudes in the sunshine as in the storm; yes, to higher. 
There is such a thing as an equation of spiritual ad¬ 
vantages. Those who are on the verge of the twen¬ 
tieth century may achieve as lofty Christian excel¬ 
lences as the believers who listened to the preaching of 
Peter at Pentecost. The gift of the Holy Spirit has 
suffered no diminution because of the intervening cen¬ 
turies. Like Christ, the giver of the Paraclete, He is 
the same yesterday, to-day and forever. Fulfil the 
conditions, and the humblest modern believer may 
receive Him in the perfect performance of His offices 
as graciously and as effectively as did the company in 
the upper room. The externals of sound and tongues 
of fire were no part of the essential and inward grace 
bestowed in the Comforter. 

When any local church, any company of believers 
associated for spiritual ends, fulfils the social condi¬ 
tions,— all of one accord in one place making the re¬ 
ception of the Holy Spirit their only business for at 
least ten days, — Pentecost will be repeated in every 
essential particular. Their hearts will be purified by 
faith, and they will be endowed with a marvellous 
spiritual insight and courage and utterance. 

It is not the law of the Spirit that His transfiguring 
power should decrease with the lapse of ages, nor with 


94 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


the spread of education and the growth of intelligence 
and culture. It is true that there is an intellectual 
pride with a pretence to culture which boasts that it 
has outgrown such so-called crudities as disfigured 
Christianity on the day of Pentecost. These over¬ 
wise philosophers insist that the doctrine that one 
personality, even though divine, can interpenetrate a 
human personality and consciously abide therein, vio¬ 
lates all the known principles of mental philosophy 
and lays the foundation of various forms of fanaticism, 
in the end destructive of all morality and sound piety. 
Our reply to this is that the greater the value of a 
coin the greater its liability to be counterfeited. The 
highest possible experience for men dwelling in houses 
of clay is to be inhabited by God in the person of His 
Spirit. This is a mystery next to the incarnation of 
the Son of God in human form. 

It is natural that the proclamation that both the 
body and soul of every believer may through simple 
faith become the habitation of God through the Spirit, 
should aw’aken the hostility of the great adversary of 
all goodness, and that he should endeavor to discredit 
this glorious privilege of the indwelling Paraclete by 
inspiring counterfeits grossly defective in moral char¬ 
acter or greatly unbalanced in mental equipoise. This 
he has done in every revival of genuine spirituality 
since the first effusion of the Spirit of promise, as in the 
days of Luther and also in Wesley’s times. But as men 
of common sense still continue to put gold in their 
purses despite the spurious coin occasionally uttered, 
so wise men and women will by the prayer of faith 


THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT. 


95 


receive, as the greatest boon possible to mortals, the 
Holy Spirit as a distinct and permanently abiding bless¬ 
ing. Such wise people, if asked how can the divine 
thus dwell in the human, the infinite in the finite, and 
both personalities be preserved, will no more attempt 
to explain this mystery than they will the enigma of 
electricity filling a mass of iron while both remain 
unchanged, and that of the immaterial spirit inhabiting 
the material body while both retain their identity. 
The rays of the sun after passing through a double 
convex lens of ice will kindle a fire. So the Holy 
Spirit has kindled an inextinguishable fire in many an 
icy heart. The facts in both the natural and the spirit¬ 
ual realm must stand, though our poor philosophy is 
baffled in accounting for the manner of the facts. It 
is enough for us to know the conditions by which the 
facts are produced, where the fact itself is of tran¬ 
scendent value, as that man may be indwelt by God. 
This honor and blessedness, unknown to the patriarchs, 
to the Israelites, the chosen people of God, and even to 
the twelve apostles before Pentecost, is now offered to 
the most illiterate and obscure believer in Jesus Christ 
who will comply with the conditions by which a per¬ 
sonal Pentecost may be experienced. 

In answer to our exposition of “the law of the Spirit ” 
as invariably cleansing and filling all who exercise an 
all-surrending faith, it may be alleged that Paul teaches 
that the Spirit performs the work of His offices in 
“every man severally as he will.” This is said, not of 
the graces of the Spirit, but of the distribution of His 
nine extraordinary gifts enumerated in I Cor. xii. 8-II. 


9 6 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

The Spirit Himself is Christ’s gift to every one “ who 
loves him and keeps his commandments.” He is to 
be in us, and we are to “know him;” i. e. } to be con¬ 
scious of His abiding in us “ forever.” Not only the 
Spirit but also the Father and the Son “ make their 
abode ” with us. All this is promised in John xiv. 15- 
23 ; not sovereignly to whomsoever the Spirit wills, 
but universally without exception wherever there is 
evangelical love to Christ evidenced by obedience. 
This it is which makes the least in the Pentecostal king¬ 
dom greater than Christ’s forerunner, who was ranked 
by Him as superior to Abraham, the founder of God’s 
earthly church, and to Moses, the lawgiver of the 
world. 

Many people are so dazzled by the splendor of the 
outward and extraordinary gifts of the Spirit that they 
undervalue the infinitely superior boon of the indwell¬ 
ing of the giver Himself, imparting life and adorning 
with all the Christian graces. To put gifts above grace 
is an old mistake. Simon Magus is not the last in¬ 
stance of this kind. Many are now eager to possess 
the gift of healing who would not cross the street to 
receive the grace of perfected holiness. It is a very 
serious error to regard anything as superior to the fruit 
of the Spirit. Churches fall into it when, seeking after 
a pastor, they first ask, “ Is he brilliant in the pulpit?” 
“Is he rhetorical, poetical, oratorical?” “If he is we 
must have him.” The question respecting his piety, 
his fulness of the Spirit, his grip of faith, his knowledge 
of the Holy Scriptures, the basis of faith, and the 
indispensable qualification for such preaching as saves 


THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT. 


97 


and sanctifies, is not emphasized, and frequently is not 
asked at all. Occasionally we find a church inquiring 
for a Barnabas. “ For he was a good man, and full of 
the Holy Ghost and of faith: and much people was 
added unto the Lord.” Yet his name, “ son of ex¬ 
hortation,” as in the Revision, is not suggestive of pulpit 
oratory of the classical sort. 

The doctrine of the law of the Spirit is very beauti¬ 
fully stated by Christ in His dialogue with the Samari¬ 
tan woman at Jacob’s well. “If thou knewest the gift 
of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to 
drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would 
have given thee living water.” The gift which He 
would have bestowed was the Holy Spirit, according to 
John vii. 38, 39, “ This he spake of the Spirit, which 
they who believe on Him should receive: for the Holy 
Ghost was not yet given, because Jesus was not glori¬ 
fied.” Note the invariable law of certain receiving 
following confident asking: If thou hadst asked, He 
would have given. There is the same invariable order 
of effect following cause in the spiritual realm as there 
is in the material realm. Turn the faucet, and you get 
a stream of water so long as the faucet is connected 
with the reservoir on a higher level. Try this a thousand 
times, and the same effect follows. Turn the spigot of 
true prayer, and the living water, the personal Holy 
Spirit, is poured out upon the thirsty soul. It has been 
well said that God answers all true prayer and wishes 
to receive more. In the bosom of the Infinite Father 
there is a shoreless and fathomless Lake Superior of 
living waters ready to fill millions and billions of human 


98 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


spirits when they supply the aqueducts. In fact, the 
main aqueduct was laid by God Himself on the day 
of Pentecost, and the water of life is brought to every 
door. To appropriate it we must lay the individual 
service-pipe. 

“ Angelic spirits, countless souls, 

Of Thee have drunk their fill; 

And to eternity will drink 
Thy joy and glory still. 

4 ‘ O little heart of mine ! shall pain 
Or sorrow make thee moan, 

When all this God is all for thee, 

A Father all thine own? ” 

Before leaving this charming scene of Jacob’s well, 
we call attention to another spiritual law. Not only 
does receiving depend on asking, but asking depends 
on knowing. “ If thou knewest, thou wouldst have 
asked.” Many souls wander for years in painful 
thirst because no one tells them of the supply of water 
within their reach. Hence the need of ceaseless tes¬ 
timony by those who have found the unfailing fountain 
Hence the pressure of the missionary motive upon all 
who “ have been made partakers of the Holy Ghost.” 
Interest in Christian missions in pagan lands and city 
slums is a fair gauge of the spirituality of an individ 
ual and of a church. 

If knowing depends on testimony, the inquiry arises, 
How many witnesses have we among our readers who 
can attest the fulness of the Spirit? 


MIRACLES OF THE HOLY GHOST. 


99 


CHAPTER XIII. 


MIRACLES OF THE HOLY GHOST. 


T HE question is often asked, What are “ the greater 
works ” which believers in Christ shall do ? This 
marvellous promise is found in His consolatory 
address a few days before His death. The chief topic 
of encouragement, comfort and hope is the Paraclete 
whom the risen Lord will bestow. His works will be 
more wonderful than the physical miracles of Jesus 
Christ. This is declared in John xiv. 12-17. I quote 
Dr. Campbell’s version, which is remarkable chiefly 
for its punctuation. It must be borne in mind that 
there is no punctuation in the original. “ Verily, verily, 
I say unto you”—a formula “in which the Son of 
God speaks out of His coequality with the Father ” 
(Stier)—“ He who believeth on me, shall himself do 
such works as I do; nay, even greater than these shall 
he do; because I go to my Father, and will do whatso¬ 
ever ye shall ask in my name. That the Father may 
be glorified in the Son, whatsoever ye shall ask in my 
name, I will do.” It is worthy of note that this doing 
greater works, this survival of the supernatural from age 
to age, is not the exclusive prerogative of the apostles, 
but it belongs, to every one, however humble, who be¬ 
lieves on Christ. Again, our greater works are done 
by the glorified Jesus on the throne above in response 


IOO 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


to our faith. In the same breath He declares that He 
will do the greater works which we shall do. This 
paradox He explains in His next utterance: “ If ye 
love me, keep my commandments; and I will entreat 
the Father, and he will give you another Monitor to 
continue with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.” 
This “ Helper, Advocate ; Greek, Paraclete ” (Revised 
Version, margin) will be the divine agent sent down 
from heaven to do these greater miracles through be¬ 
lievers in Christ. This brings us to “ the miracles of 
the Holy Ghost ” which in the Old Testament are 
physical, as when Ezekiel says, “ The Spirit lifted me 
up and took me away.” .The same manifestation of 
supernatural physical power by the Holy Ghost was 
experienced by Philip : V The Spirit of the Lord caught 
away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more.” But 
the promise under discussion does not relate to mira¬ 
cles in the realm of matter, but rather to those in the 
province of mind, in the re-creation of the human soul, 
called figuratively birth from above, or the new birth, 
the resurrection of a dead soul, the new creation. This 
spiritual miracle is greater than any physical miracle 
wrought by Christ before He burst asunder the gates 
of death by His inherent power to take again the life 
which He had laid down, for the following reasons: 

i. Physical miracles were temporal in their effects. 
Those raised from sickness died of disease in a few 
years. The multitudes fed by miracle hungered again 
in a few hours. The eyes into which Jesus by a word 
let in the light were soon darkened again by the shad¬ 
ows of the tomb. The tongue of the dumb loosened 


MIRACLES OF THE HOLY GHOST. 


IOI 


by the Son of man was soon silenced by the touch of 
death. But miracles wrought in the transfiguration of 
the soul are enduring unto eternal life. “ He that be- 
lieveth on the Son hath eternal life ” within the grasp of 
his free agency. Jesus healed the body for time, the 
Spirit heals the soul for eternity. “ A healed leper 
may appear to be a greater miracle than a renewed 
soul, but in reality, in comparison, he is hardly a miracle 
at all! ” (Joseph Parker.) 

2. The results of spiritual miracles are far more 
valuable. Mind is far superior to matter. Hence “ to 
minister to a mind diseased and pluck from the mem¬ 
ory a rooted sorrow ” is an achievement in a higher 
realm and of immensely greater value. For this reason 
Christ Himself did not place a primary emphasis on 
physical wonders as His credentials, and they are 
scarcely so much as referred to in the apostolic writ¬ 
ings. Peter, who had seen them all, mentions them 
only once, and then only to Christ’s murderers in 
Jerusalem, who were incapable of appreciating any 
higher proof of His Messiahship : “ Jesus of Nazareth, 
a man approved of God among you by miracles and 
wonders and signs.” St. Paul magnifies those spiritual 
marvels which God wrought by the Holy Spirit in the 
regeneration and sanctification of souls. In his estima¬ 
tion “ the shining in our hearts to give the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ ” was a greater act than the Fiat lux which 
illumined the first day of creation (II Cor. iv. 6). 

3. To transform a spirit from death to life, from sin 
to holiness, requires a higher power than any change 


102 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


wrought in matter. Spirit is a self-determining person¬ 
ality which may successfully withstand omnipotence, or 
rather, physical omnipotence is inapplicable to the pro¬ 
duction of spiritual effects. Sin cannot be crushed out 
of a soul with an almighty trip hammer. God can 
transform inert matter as He may will, but He is power¬ 
less to regenerate a stubborn human will; but in the 
presence of a consenting will He displays to the aston¬ 
ished universe “ the exceeding greatness of his power 
to usward who believe.” Hence the age of the most 
notable miracles is now in the very zenith of its glory. 
They are visible in every land where the gospel is 
preached in faith. Boston has just witnessed the 
transformation of a burglar and drunkard into a mis¬ 
sionary on the Congo. Recovered from the slums and 
converted in the Kneeland Street Rescue Mission, he 
immediately wrote to the governor of Maryland, the 
scene of his crimes, offering at his request to appear 
in court, testify against himself, and be sentenced to 
the penitentiary. In the absence of such a request he 
volunteered to go to a deadly clime to preach Christ 
mighty to save. “ When the proud Brahman has re¬ 
ceived the truth as it is in Jesus, and extended the right 
hand of Christian fellowship to the meanest member of 
the lowest caste whom he has met at the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per, a greater miracle has been wrought than in the 
healing of the lame or the raising of the dead.” To 
put God’s law “ in the inward parts ” of a tribe of 
thieves in India, as the Holy Spirit has done through 
Bishop J. M. Thoburn, transforming them into sons of 
God, “ is more than to fill the firmament with stars.” 


MIRACLES OF THE HOLY GHOST. 


103 


“ Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, ... 
and it shall be unto Jehovah for an everlasting miracle 
that shall not be cut off.” Spiritual miracles, in the 
regeneration of depraved and wicked men, are the 
standing proof of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Re¬ 
generation, crowned with the entire sanctification of a 
soul once dead in sin, loving what God hates and hat¬ 
ing what God loves, is the supreme miracle of the Holy 
Ghost vividly portrayed by Paul: “ Fornicators, idol¬ 
aters, adulterers, effeminate [catamites], nor abusers 
of themselves with mankind [sodomites], nor thieves 
[robbers, Conybeare and Howson], nor covetous [wan¬ 
tons, Conybeare and Howson], nor drunkards, nor re- 
vilers, shall inherit the kingdom of God ” (I Cor. vi. 9, 
10). What a rogues’ gallery is this ! as vile a gang of 
criminals as ever broke jail. What can the Holy Spirit 
do with these but to abandon them forever? But, hold ! 
let us read further: “And such were some of you; 
but ye washed yourselves [Revised Version, margin], 
but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the 
name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by THE Spirit of 
our God.” The^ Paraclete has transformed them all 
into a company of saints bearing the image of Christ 
and candidates for promotion to thrones beside the 
archangels. Bad men have been transformed into good 
men standing in the same shoes. 


104 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN REGENERATION. 


R EGENERATION is the lodgement by the Holy 
Spirit of the new principle of life. This is love 
to God, which is the ruling motive of every gen¬ 
uine Christian. There is a radical and an essential dif¬ 
ference between those who are born again and the best 
of those who lay claim to only natural goodness, a 
beautiful moral character revolving around self as a 
centre. But the great transition from spiritual death to 
spiritual life does not make the child of God at once 
complete in holiness. The Holy Spirit in sanctifica¬ 
tion does not work magically, nor mechanically like a 
washing machine, “ but by the influence of grace, in 
accordance with the essential constitution of man, and 
in the way of a vital process, only by degrees com¬ 
pletely renewing the soul.” While the Spirit in the 
new birth touches the whole nature, the thoughts, the 
feelings and the will, so that the man is a new creature, 
his renewal is not complete in any part. At first he is 
in spiritual knowledge only a babe. His faith is un¬ 
steady and often mingled with distrust, while his love 
is not usually strong enough to secure uninterrupted 
victory over temptation. The enthronement of love 
does not immediately render the pleasures of sin unat¬ 
tractive, nor destroy the painfulnes 9 of self-denial, nor 


THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN REGENERATION. 105 

instantaneously change sinful habits. Such is the state 
of immature converts to Christ, “the flesh lusting 
against the Spirit.” The Corinthians were character¬ 
ized as “ carnal, walking as men.” We know that John 
says that “ he that has been born of God sinneth not” 
when he is describing those whom he styles “ fathers” 
or adult believers, just as Paul describes the same class 
as having “ crucified the flesh with the passions and 
lusts.* Neither of these apostles is describing an ideal 
Christian, as some teach who deny the possibility of 
complete deliverance from depravity in this life. They 
are describing regeneration at its climax, the glorious 
possibilities of the birth from above, when it has culmi¬ 
nated in perfected holiness. 

Bishop Foster sums up the defects of the experience 
of regeneration in a "more comprehensive manner than 
we remember seeing in any theological treatise. He 
does not minify the experience of regeneration, but 
declares it to be a glorious experience. He, however, 
shows -its defects in this manner: “ I note, third, that 
dissatisfiedness of the soul with itself is a common ex¬ 
perience of all regenerate souls, varying from intense 
distress at times to mild regret. Its experiences are 
not satisfactory. It has a prevailing consciousness of 
inexcusable defects. It does not reach its ideal. It 
feels the chiding of the Holy Spirit. It lashes itself 
with reprovings. It often carries an unhealed wound 
because of its unfaithfulness or failure to be what it 
feels it ought to be. There is the abiding consciousness 
that there is something better for it. When it is upheld 


See Appendix, Note E. 


io6 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

and sustained in an average experience, and others 
think well of it, and there is no external failure visible 
to other eyes, it discerns inward poverties which grieve 
and distress it. It would love more, be more patient, 
more brave, more trusting, more cheerful, stronger, 
more robust; it would work more and do more and be 
more. There are holy yearnings in it after something 
higher and nobler. There is often a distressing sense 
of remaining evil in it. I think I am safe in saying this 
is universal experience, subsequent to the experience 
of regeneration. This has been called in our theologiz¬ 
ing and in the theologizing of all the Christian schools, 
‘ the remains of the carnal mind,’ ‘ unextracted roots of 
inbred sin,’ ‘the spirit of the flesh,’ ‘ natural corruption,’ 
‘ seeds of depravity,’ ‘ the old man,’ and by various other 
semi-scriptural names. These phrases all point to a 
fact, but not unfrequently a sensuous meaning is at¬ 
tached to them which leads wide apart from the truth 
which they aim to represent. They are supposed to 
represent some sediment or infusion in the soul or in 
the body, or in both, which must be washed out. What 
}s meant and what is true is this: when the soul is for¬ 
given and its affections are turned to righteousness, so 
that it passes from under the dominion of evil, impulses 
and inclination to evil are not completely eradicated. 
They still arise and assert themselves. They assail and 
disturb the peace of the soul. They have a constant 
tendency to prevail with it. They find support in its 
old habits and in its native lusts — that is, desires and 
cravings.”* In the above truthful condensation of ex- 


* Merrick Lectures on “ The Philosophy of Christian Experience.' 


THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN REGENERATION. 107 

perience it will be noticed that the bishop teaches that 
we are not entirely sanctified at conversion — a doctrine 
often denied in the Church to-day. He teaches as John 
Wesley did, that there remains yet that which needs a 
farther work of the Spirit, which is called, in the lan¬ 
guage of theology, entire sanctification, which supple¬ 
ments the defects of the soul still remaining after regen¬ 
eration. 

The adverse influences and tendencies which con¬ 
tinue after the new birth imperil the very existence of 
the new principle of love to God by overcoming and 
choking it, unless it is continually nourished and 
strengthened by divine grace. Strength is supplied to 
the believer by the inner presence of the Holy Spirit. 
His indwelling is by faith. If faith declines, the Spirit’s 
sphere in the soul is narrowed. If confidence in God 
is “ cast away ” — a possible act against which we are 
warned in the Scriptures (Heb. x. 35)—then the Spirit 
withdraws, or rather, is excluded by unbelief, and love, 
the vital spark of the spiritual life, expires. Hence 
the question whether the Spirit shall be a merely 
transient impulse toward purity, or a lasting power, 
depends on the free will of the regenerate soul. The 
parable of the sower is exemplified to-day in the case 
of those who have no depth of earth. Their love to 
Christ soon degenerates into a mere sentiment with 
little or no influence on practical life, and in a short 
time the sentiment itself entirely evaporates, and the 
soul becomes “twice dead, plucked up by the roots” 
(Jude 12). What is the safeguard against such a 
disaster? It is such an indwelling of the fulness of the 


o8 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Spirit as excludes everything contrary to the divine 
nature by filling and flooding the soul with a love that 
is ever enlarging the vessel and ever filling it to the 
brim. Then love is perfect in the sense that it is no 
longer mixed in kind and so weak in degree as to be 
unable to encounter the temptation successfully. Says 
Prof. Candlish : “ The new life of Christianity is a unity, 
and though, on account of the imperfect and abnormal 
condition of most Christians, it does not show itself with 
perfect symmetry, yet it tends toward moral excellence 
and perfection in every direction, and the more vigor¬ 
ous the central principle of religious life is, the more 
will particular virtues be developed and increased.” 
This is progress toward entire sanctification by the 
Holy Spirit, and is a necessary condition of that crown¬ 
ing work. The question is often asked, “Why does not 
the Spirit entirely sanctify when He regenerates?” We 
answer, it is because that neither the consecration nor 
the faith of the penitent sinner is adequate to this com¬ 
plete work. The person then surrenders his bad things, 
he lays down his arms, quits hjs rebellion and sues for 
pardon. This is all that his faith grasps. But he soon 
learns that a deeper consecration is requisite, that all 
his good things, his possessions, his bodily powers, his 
intellectual faculties must be fully consecrated to Christ. 
To pour all his money into the treasury of his imperilled 
country and to give his life by enlisting in her military 
service is far different from the act of surrender as a 
prisoner of war. In the next place, faith for entire sanc¬ 
tification is a far higher act, involving a deeper knowl¬ 
edge of one’s spiritual needs and a larger comprehen- 


THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN REGENERATION. 109 

sion of the vastness of the supply found in Jesus Christ. 
This deeper knowledge is not found in the spiritual babe. 

Moreover, at the risk of being suspected of predes- 
tinarianism, I insist on another reason why the Spirit 
does not entirely purge the soul at the new birth. The 
impartation of spiritual life to a dead soul is wrought 
by the Spirit alone without the soul’s co-operation, 
though it is active in repentance, faith and turning to 
the Lord. It is active in conversion, but passive in re¬ 
generation. Theologians would call the first a case of 
synergism and the second an instance of monergism. 
If our distinction between these works of the Spirit is 
correct, it affords a sufficient reason why entire sanctifi¬ 
cation could not be wrought by the Spirit at the time of 
the new birth. The old man cannot be crucified with¬ 
out the co-operation of the new man. He must sign 
the death warrant of that sin in the flesh which the Son 
of God by His sacrifice for sin has condemned, in order 
to make that condemnation effectual for the destruction 
of “the body of sin” (Rom. vi. 6). “In implanting 
the new life at first, the Holy Spirit has to deal with a 
soul that is indeed essentially active, but in regard to 
spirituality insensible or opposed to the call of God. 
Hence this work is entirely due to divine power; we 
are His workmanship, created in Christ unto good 
works. But in the preservation and development of 
the new life the Spirit has to deal with a soul that is 
now spiritually alive and able and inclined to work in 
the same direction as His work.” * In sanctification 
“ we are God’s fellow-workers ” (I Cor. iii. 9, Revised 


* Prof. Candlish. 


I 10 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Version). Hence the momentous import of the exhor¬ 
tation of Paul, “ Carry out with fear and trembling your 
own salvation. For it is God which worketh in you 
both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” * The 
occasion for fear and trembling arises from the fact 
that God’s work in me may fail to reach perfection 
because of my failure to work perfectly with Him. It 
is indeed a solemn and awful thing to be fellow-workers 
with the holy God in the production of the most valu¬ 
able thing in the universe, a holy character. In the 
work of purifying ourselves while God is refining us how 
careful should we be lest through lack of faith in His 
exceedingly great and precious promises we should mar 
the work of His Spirit in perfectly conforming us to the 
image of His Son. As a slight motion may spoil the 
image which the king of day is imprinting on the pre¬ 
pared plate, so a little self-indulgence or heedlessness or 
wavering of faith may blur the image of Christ which 
the Spirit is creating in me. I am responsible not only 
for all that I can do towards completed holiness, which 
is perfect consecration, but I am also responsible for all 
that the Holy Ghost can do with my co-operation. 

The work of the Holy Spirit in the progressive sanc¬ 
tification of the newborn soul is indirect: in opening 
the heart to receive the truth,f the instrument of puri- 

* Dean Alford’s version of Phil. ii. 12, 13. 

t“ In II Thess. ii. 13, sanctification of the Spirit is placed in close connection with 
belief of the truth. And from Acts xxvi. 18 we learn that not only forgiveness of sins, but 
a lot among the sanctified, is obtained by faith in Christ. This accords with the broad 
principles asserted in Mark ix. 23, * All things are possible to him who believes in 
Gal. iii. 14, ‘ That we may receive the promise of the Spirit through faith,’ and in Acts 
xv. 9, ‘By faith having purified their hearts,’ and with a great mass of Bible teaching 
which I have not space to quote and expound. In Rom. vi. 11, St. Paul bids us 
‘ Reckon ourselves to be dead to sin, but living for God in Christ Jesus.’ This reckon¬ 
ing is the mental process of faith, for it results in assurance resting upon the promise of 
God.” — J. A. Beet’s “ Holiness as Understood by the Writers of the Bible, ” page 55. 


THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN REGENERATION. 


I I I 


fication ; in giving vigor to the spiritual life ; in strength¬ 
ening the will to resist temptation, and in diminishing 
the power of evil habits. It is repressive of depravity 
rather than totally destructive. 

The entire eradication of the propensity to sin is by 
the direct and instantaneous act of the Holy Spirit re¬ 
sponsive to a special act of faith in Christ claiming the 
full heritage of the believer. “ When we learn that 
God claims us for His own, and when, after fruitless 
personal efforts to render Him the devotion He requires, 
we learn for the first time that God will work in us by 
the agency of His Spirit and by actual spiritual contact 
with Christ the devotion He requires, and when we 
venture to believe, ... we find by happy experience 
that according to our faith it is done to us. The ex¬ 
perience thus gained becomes an era in our spiritual 
life. We feel that we are then holy in a sense unknown 
to us before.” * It is in reference to this distinctive act 
of the Sanctifier that it is noted by an eminent expositor 
“ that in the New Testament we never read expressly 
and unmistakably of sanctification as a gradual process.” 
This is said in view of the almost universal use of the 
aorist tense of the verbs to sanctify and to cleanse. 

To this distinct and decisive action of the Holy 
Spirit in the extinction of proneness to sin, bringing 
the believer into the land of rest, in marvellous contrast 
with His previous wilderness experience, after His re¬ 
generation, there are too many intelligent and trust¬ 
worthy witnesses to be lightly passed by as of no ac¬ 
count. They assure us that they were truly converted 

* J. A. Beet’s “ Holiness as Understood by the Writers of the Bible,” page 60. 


I 12 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


and received the direct witness of the Spirit to their 
adoption; that they did not backslide, but grew in 
grace; that they were not conscious of living in wilful 
violation of any known law of God, and that they could 
testify that there is no condemnation to them who are 
in Christ Jesus. But they solemnly aver that through 
all their regenerate life, before receiving Christ for their 
entire sanctification, they were conscious of a strong 
inward enemy whom they were striving to bind and 
cast out but always failed; that by the study of the 
Scriptures they found that this rebel within was called 
“ the old man,” whom theologians style “ original sin;” 
that after reading or hearing the testimony of those en¬ 
tirely consecrated souls who had through specific faith 
and importunate prayer found complete deliverance, 
they definitely sought for this distinctive work of the 
Holy Ghost, and at an ever-memorable date they 
emerged into a blissful consciousness of inward purity 
and profound peace far beyond all former experiences. 
This victory many have attested decades and scores of 
years. Dr. Asa Mahan, whose temper in his youth 
was so ungovernable that his father predicted that in a 
fit of anger he would kill some one and expiate his 
crime on the scaffold, and whose irascibility in the 
early years of his Christian ministry was the cause of 
untold grief, testifies to a change wrought by the Holy 
Spirit so great as to make the last forty years of his 
life years undisturbed by one gust of irritability, though 
he often met with insults and other occasions to call it 
forth if it had been slumbering within. The Sanctifier 
had cast out this demon and so adorned the place of 


THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN REGENERATION. I 13 

his former abode with the fruits of the Spirit and so 
filled it with His own permanent fulness that he could 
not return though he may have “ taken with himself 
seven other spirits more wicked than himself.” The 
Lord be praised ! There is a power which not only 
cleanses but also keeps. It is to be noted that the wit¬ 
nesses to whom we refer agree in testifying that this 
entire sanctification was subsequent to regeneration, 
and that it was accomplished by the Spirit in an in¬ 
stant, and not by the processes of growth. 

This negative work of the Spirit in the eradication of 
inherited proneness to sin is followed by an illimitable 
development of all the Christian graces. One may 
reach the point where sin is all destroyed and love be¬ 
come perfect, i. e ., pure and unmixed, and yet his 
power of moral discernment and his mental enlargement 
be capable of increase through time and through 
eternity. His spiritual development will be commen¬ 
surate. 

Perfection in degree of love is never to be attained. 

Perfection in kind is the gift of the Holy Ghost to 
the believer now. 

There prevails in certain religious circles the doc¬ 
trine that in the new birth a new nature is created, while 
the old nature, or old man, continues till physical death 
extinguishes his life. It is said that the old nature is 
nailed to the cross, but he does not die so long as the 
human spirit acts through a material organism. Denial 
of the possibility of entire sanctification in the present 
life is an obvious inference. Another outcome of this 
error is that depravity is necessary, and that it is be- 


I 14 THE gospel of the comforter. 

yond the reach of the Holy Spirit in the application of 
the blood of Christ which cleanses from all sin. Hence 
the notion of two natures existing in every Christian, 
however consecrated, so long as he is in the body, the 
one a new creation and therefore sinless, and the other 
sinful and beyond all hope of change for the better, is 
exceedingly mischievous, palliating and excusing evil 
propensities. When we speak of the Holy Spirit as 
the indwelling Sanctifier we will examine the alleged 
scriptural proofs of this doctrine. We insist that the 
work of the Spirit in the new creation of the penitent 
believer in Christ is not the creation of new faculties, 
but the rectification of those already existing, weak¬ 
ened and marred by sin. He has no need of a new 
reason, for even after the fall, reason in man grasps the 
same self-evident truths that exist in God. In fact, the 
modern teaching of philosophy is that truths of intui¬ 
tion are the activity of God immanent in the soul of 
man. , His sensibilities, both natural and moral, have 
been damaged by the fall of Adam, and his will has 
become enslaved to his perverted affections and de¬ 
praved desires. It is the office of the Holy Spirit to 
lift this yoke of bondage and to bring the newborn 
soul into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. He 
whom Christ Jesus makes free is free indeed. It is the 
slave that is emancipated and not a new being just cre¬ 
ated. Such a being would need no act of emancipa¬ 
tion. It is the office of the Spirit to give the will the 
gracious ability to make holy choices, and to clarify the 
moral sense or conscience so that its decisions will all 
harmonize with ethical axioms or immutable morality. 


THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN REGENERATION. I I 5 

The “ new creature ” spoken of by Paul is a figure of 
speech for the vivid presentation of the transforming 
power of the Holy Spirit in the renewal of a soul badly 
shattered by sin. Conscience is restored to full activ¬ 
ity both in its power to discern and its power to ap¬ 
prove or to condemn. The human spirit may well be 
compared to a skylight in the dome of his being 
through which he was designed to have a vision of 
spiritual realities. But sin has darkened the windows 
and intercepted the heavenly vision. The remedy is 
not in the demolition of the old skylight and the setting 
of a new one, but in the thorough cleansing of the 
original window by One who by taking up His abode in 
that dome can always keep it transparent by His purify¬ 
ing presence. The process seems to be first to cause 
the law of God to shine into conscience, the light of 
forgiveness, then the light of purity, “ having no more 
conscience of sin.” 

Another error obstructive of the spiritual life of all 
the so-called sacramentarian churches — more than half 
of Christendom — consists in a perversion of the mean¬ 
ing of Christ’s words to Nicodemus, “ born of water 
and the Spirit.” Those who magnify the sacraments 
as saving ordinances, and some who do not teach bap¬ 
tismal regeneration, like the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, which uses the Anglican ritual abridged, teach 
that the words “ born of water” refer to water baptism.* 
But others, including the writer, insist that these words 
have no reference to that ordinance, which was not 
made obligatory upon believers till after Christ’s resur- 

* See the first Scripture quoted in the “ Order for the Administration of Baptism 
to such as are of Riper Years ” in the ritual of said church. 


II 6 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

rection, years after his dialogue with Nicodemus. The 
identification of water baptism with the new birth has 
wrought untold harm to myriads of souls, deluding 
them with a shadow of the requisite for salvation in¬ 
stead of the substance, the impartation of spiritual life 
and initial sanctification symbolized by water. We 
sympathize with Weisse, though we cannot use his 
strong language, that to make regeneration depend upon 
baptism by water “ is little better than blasphemy.” 
We believe with Neander, Calvin, Grotius and other 
scholars, that Christ here intends the symbolic import 
of water, and not water itself, ks an agent of cleansing, 
according to an ancient figure which expressed one 
idea by two nouns connected by and instead of a noun 
and an adjective, as, “ we drink from cups and gold ” for 
golden cups . Thus, “ ye must be born of water and 
the Spirit” for the purifying Spirit. Desiring to give 
his distinguished hearer a clear idea of the change 
which the Spirit must work in the natural heart, he adds 
the idea of initial cleansing by using the word water. 

In like manner a more thorough purification is ex¬ 
pressed by the words of John the Baptist descriptive 
of Christ, “ He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost 
and with fire,” an agent of cleansing far more effect¬ 
ual than water in the purification of earthen and me¬ 
tallic utensils. We cannot here, as some do, read and 
as meaning or , “ with the Holy Ghost or fire,” mean¬ 
ing all who do not receive the Holy Spirit’s baptism 
must be baptized with hell fire. We prefer the exe¬ 
gesis of Bishop Hopkins, “ those who are baptized 
with the Holy Spirit are, as it were, plunged into the 


THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN REGENERATION. I 17 

heavenly flame, whose searching energy devours all 
their dross, tin and base alloy.” Here is a promise of 
a richer blessing, a more thorough sanctification and a 
far larger equipment for effective service than that which 
is enjoyed by the average Christian of to-day. “The 
purification at conversion, comparatively superficial, is 
only that which may be fitly symbolized by water 
baptism. But fire searches the inmost springs of life. 
The baptism of fire must be such a close and intimate 
contact of the holy God with the inner man, as to 
to light up its dark secrets and burn out its unclean¬ 
ness.” * 

“ The Baptism in Fire ” Rev. Charles Edward Smith. 


118 


THE GOSPEE OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XV. 

CHRIST OUR SANCTIFICATION. 

HE work of each of the three Persons of the Trinity 



in the scheme of salvation is quite definitely 


stated in the Holy Scriptures. The Father 
originated the plan, the Son by His atoning death pro¬ 
vided the means, the blood of sprinkling, and the Holy 
Spirit conditionally applies it for the soul’s purification. 
But sometimes the work of the Spirit is ascribed to the 
Son. This seeming confusion perplexes the student of 
the Bible, till he learns that when the Son is spoken of 
as sanctifying it is always in a different sense from the 
Spirit’s work of purification. In the interest of clear¬ 
ness of thought and of saving truth set forth as the 
cloudless noonday sun, let us note in what sense the 
sanctification ascribed to Christ in several texts differs 
from that internal work wrought by the Comforter. 
When Christ is spoken of as our sanctification, it is 
meant, not that He enters into the hearts of believers 
and cleanses them, but that He provides the purifying 
medium, His own shed blood, and the sanctifying 
agent, the Holy Spirit. The Son’s work is external, 
the Spirit’s is internal; or in philosophic terms, the 
work of the one is objective, that of the other is sub¬ 
jective ; the one sanctifies provisionally and the other 
effectually. Now let us carry this distinction into Paul’s 


CHRIST OUR SANCTIFICATION. I 19 

letters to the Corinthians. In I Cor. i. 2 they are ad¬ 
dressed as “sanctified in Christ Jesus,” and in iii. 1 Paul 
“ cannot speak unto them as spiritual, but as carnal, 
even as unto babes in Christ.” How are these appar¬ 
ent contradictions harmonized ? It will not do to say 
that Paul, to say nothing of the Spirit who inspired him, 
flatly contradicts himself. In the light of the distinc¬ 
tion between provisional sanctification in Christ and 
actual sanctification by the Holy Spirit, a very beauti¬ 
ful harmony emerges. Through faith the Corinthians 
had been born from above, and had become “babes in 
Christ,” and were now entitled to all the privileges 
which He had purchased for believers, among which 
was conditional sanctification. But since they had 
failed to appropriate their heritage by the exercise of 
faith, they were still strongly carnal in their leanings, 
as evidenced by their “ envying, strife and divisions.” 
They were provisionally sanctified in Christ; they were 
not actually sanctified by the Holy Spirit. The con¬ 
tradiction disappears. In the same way the contradic¬ 
tion between the statement that “ Jesus Christ is the 
Saviour of all men ” and His sentence of a part of them 
in the last day to eternal punishment disappears in the 
consideration that Christ is the conditional Saviour of 
all the human race, but the real Saviour of believers 
only. 

In I Cor. i. 30 Christ “ is made unto us wisdom and 
righteousness, sanctification and redemption.” This 
He is to every one who does by faith appropriate Him 
and become wise by believing divine revelation personi¬ 
fied in Christ, the truth, and justified through faith in 


120 


TIIE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Him, and sanctified through the reception of the Spirit 
in His office as Sanctifier, and redeemed, soul and body 
reunited and glorified, through persevering faith in Him 
who shall change the body of our “humiliation,” that it 
may be fashioned like unto His glorious body. This dis¬ 
tinction between provisional sanctification in Christ and 
sanctification inwrought by the Holy Spirit secured by 
faith utterly excludes the doctrine of holiness imputed to 
persons whose hearts are still filled with depravity. One 
may die for another, but one cannot be holy for another. 
Sin and holiness are personal, and not transferable. 
Alford calls attention to the double conjunction in 
I Cor. i. 30, between “ righteousness, the source of our 
justification before God, and sanctification by His 
Spirit, implying that the Christian life is complete, the 
negative side and positive side are so joined as to form 
one whole.” The piety of the Corinthians lacked the 
positive side. They were forgiven, but not cleansed. 
They had appropriated part of their heritage in Christ, 
justification, but they had not by an appropriating faith 
claimed sanctification. The Corinthian type of Chris¬ 
tians has not become obsolete. In every age, with 
here and there an exception, it has been the prevailing 
type. This accounts for its failure to conquer the 
world. When the possible in Christian character shall 
have become the actual in the whole Church the world’s 
evangelization will be speedily accomplished. That 
generation will see the glorious consummation. 

In Heb. ii. 11 “he that sanctifieth ” is Christ, re¬ 
garded as the author of the provision of salvation and 
of the agency of the purifying Spirit, who applies to 


CHRIST OUR SANCTIFICATION. 


I 2 1 


“those who are being sanctified ” the cleansing efficacy 
of the atonement on the condition of their faith in 
Christ. 

In Heb. x. io is another instance df sanctification by 
Christ provisionally, “ through the oblation of the body 
of Jesus Christ once for all.” That inward holiness 
which the altar ritual of the Hebrews with their inter¬ 
minable repetitions was unable to produce, has been 
rendered possible to every believer through the offer¬ 
ing of the body of the adorable God-Man once for all. 
While the atonement sanctified no one, it renders pos¬ 
sible the entire sanctification of every offspring of 
Adam who will trust in Christ for this purchased 
blessing. 

Verse 14 has often been misunderstood as teaching 
that Christ brought to perfection the work of our in¬ 
ward sanctification eighteen hundred years before we 
were born: “ For by one oblation hath he perfected 
forever them that are being sanctified.” (Alford.) 
The sanctification which Christ thus perfected is pro¬ 
visional. As such it is eternally efficacious and incapa¬ 
ble of improvement. It stands ready from age to age 
to be applied by the Holy Spirit to the inward cleans¬ 
ing of every believer. Nothing is lacking but the 
outstretching of an empty hand to grasp this pearl of 
great price. Under the atonement “ all things are pos¬ 
sible to him that believeth.” 

Verse 15 does not teach the witness of the Holy 
Spirit to the actual, inward work of entire sanctification, 
as some erroneously teach, but His testimony in the 
Old Testament to the coming of the days when the 


I 22 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


provisions for the inner purification will be complete, 
when the law will no longer be a galling yoke on the 
neck, but a joyful song in the heart. It is true that 
this inner change will be through the agency of the 
Holy Spirit, who, by shining on His own work, is a 
witness to its genuineness. But this is not a proof text 
of such a witness. Well says Delitzsch: “ The Holy 
Ghost is the Spirit of prophecy, and from Him comes 
the whole God-inspired written Word. He also in that 
Word is the witness that with Christ’s return to the 
Father all is accomplished, and nothing remains to be 
done to procure for us inward perfecting and a com¬ 
plete restoration to Communion with God.” Man’s re¬ 
lation to God is no longer merely legal, but inward, 
evangelical and spiritual. He ceases from outward, 
compensative works, but concentrates his view upon 
the sanctifying and endowing grace already procured, 
and seeks to enter in and lay hold of it. This once-for- 
all provisional grace for justification and entire sancti¬ 
fication, according to Jeremiah, is the basis of the new 
covenant (Jer. xxiii. 6).* 

Many good Christians find it difficult to accept the 
doctrine of a definite and instantaneous work of the 
Holy Spirit subsequent to regeneration, because they 
cannot draw a sharply defined line between the incom¬ 
ing of the Spirit, the Lord of life, to impart life, and 
His second incoming to impart the more abundant life 
by the removal of all antagonisms thereto. When told 
that there is a difference between being free and being 
“ free indeed,” between the work of the Spirit in in- 


* See Appendix, Note F. 


CHRIST OUR SANCTIFICATION. 


123 


spiring love and in perfecting love, they are still unable 
to construe to themselves satisfactorily this distinction. 
Hence they are inclined to reject the doctrine as an 
untenable theory. 

But in the face of so much Scripture exhorting to 
holiness and commanding perfection and the fulness of 
the Spirit, and of so many promises and prayers relat¬ 
ing to the same blessing as immediately attainable, is it 
not the wiser course to bind up this difficulty with two 
others pertaining to the Holy Spirit, which every evan¬ 
gelical mind believes, but none understands? The first 
mystery is involved in the question how the Holy 
Spirit was always in the world as the inspirer of all 
true piety in human hearts, from Abel to John the 
Baptist, and yet at a definite moment, on the day of 
Pentecost, the same Spirit came down from heaven 
into the world. Here is an enigma which orthodoxy 
universally fails to explain, and yet universally believes. 
For orthodoxy receives the doctrine of the Trinity, 
which implies the eternity and the omnipresence of 
the Holy Spirit, while the Bible asserts His agency in 
creation and His activity in human hearts in all the 
pre-Christian ages. Faith accepts this mystery which 
is too high for the grasp of reason. In a similar man¬ 
ner faith answers another question, how the Holy 
Spirit was in the heart of the man Jesus Christ, inspir¬ 
ing, illumining and guiding Him all His life up to 
the hour of His baptism, when the Holy Ghost de¬ 
scended upon Him and abode in Him. How could 
He be in Him thirty years, and then enter into Him at 
a definite moment? 


24 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Here is a question which reason cannot answer. 
Yet every believer in the New Testament assents to 
these unharmonized facts in the relation of the Holy 
Spirit to the humanity of Jesus Christ. If the Bible 
teaches that entire sanctification through the Holy 
Spirit is a crisis in Christian experience, subsequent 
to the new birth by the same divine agent, and if rea¬ 
son cannot draw an accurate boundary line between 
these two works of the Spirit, why should we not bind 
up this mystery in the same bundle with the two which 
we have just described, and relegate this difficulty to 
the domain of faith? The first immediate effect would 
be the cessation of the debate which exists even in 
Wesleyan circles; there being no more occasiorf for a 
theological controversy on this third question than 
there is in the case of either of the other two. The 
second effect would be that multitudes of earnest be¬ 
lievers, having now emerged from the foggy metaphys¬ 
ics environing the subject of entire sanctification into 
the clear atmosphere of faith, would Aspire with all 
the energy of their being to enter into the full spiritual 
heritage of the children of God, now clearly set be¬ 
fore the eye of faith. A third effect would be: “ He 
that is feeble among them at that day shall be as 
David; and the house of David shall be as God, as 
the angel of the Lord,” in efficiency to resist sin and 
to sway unbelievers to bow to Christ. There would be 
a spiritual revolution in the Church, and vigor would 
supersede supineness, spiritual hunger would take the 
place of satisfied worldliness, harmony would succeed 
discord, and unity displace all tendencies to schism. 


CHRIST OUR SANCTIFICATION. 


125 


It is certainly logical to treat all the mysteries in¬ 
volved in the offices of the Paraclete alike; and it cer¬ 
tainly is unreasonable to receive two of these mysteries 
by faith and to reject the third, not because of its lack 
of scriptural proofs as the ground of faith, but because 
of its lack of transparency to the eye of reason. Can¬ 
did persons should be consistent, treating like difficul¬ 
ties in a like manner when they all stand upon the 
basis of the same supernatural revelation. But truth 
when it collides with men’s pleasures, passions and 
wills never has a fair chance. President Mark Hopkins 
suggests that, if the proof that the three angles of a 
triangle equal two right angles abridged men’s sinful 
indulgence, there would be many who would stoutly 
insist that they could not see the point of proof. This 
shows that unbelief originates in a moral rather than 
an intellectual cause. May it not be that much of the 
difficulty with the doctrine of entire sanctification arises 
from the heart and not from the head; not in a lack 
of evidence, but in a disposition to neglect the proofs 
of a work of the Holy Ghost which builds a hedge 
across the path of sinful desire, and kindles an un¬ 
quenchable fire in the house of the heart’s idols? 
Hence entire self-surrender to one’s best light is abso¬ 
lutely necessary to perfect candor in his attitude 
towards God’s truth. The least particle of self-will can 
obscure a great spiritual truth, as a hair, or platinum wire 
finer than any hair, stretched across the eye-glass of the 
telescope, will blot out Sirius, 6,000 times larger than 
the sun, and 8,400,000,000 times larger than our globe. 

It is a great thing to be “ of the truth,” to be so in 


126 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


love with it as to be willing that our eyes should be 
purged of every film in order to gaze upon her radiant 
form, and to have our feet blistered in toiling up the 
rugged path in which the heavenly maid walks that she 
may lure us to the skies. St. Paul in Eph. iv. 15 has 
one expression which shows the very quintessence of 
Christian candor requisite for realizing in experience the 
highest spiritual verities, “ truthing in love,” or “ pur¬ 
suing truth in love.” Love is the eye which sees God’s 
truth when the eye of mere intellect utterly fails. There 
is always a certainty that they who are disposed to 
sacrifice all to the truth as it is in Jesus, and out of love 
to Him, will speedily scale the loftiest heights of spirit¬ 
ual knowledge, and daily dwell upon these sunlit sum¬ 
mits evermore. 

Such are not stumbled at doctrines never revealed 
to reason but to faith only. Happy are they who early 
learn to render to reason that which belongs to reason, 
and to faith that which belongs to faith. Among the 
latter are all those truths relating to eradication of sin 
“ through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the 
truth.” 

To a person objecting to entire sanctification in the 
present life because he could not “ see into it,” excel¬ 
lent advice was recently given in these homely Saxon 
words, “ Get into it and see out.” The advice contains 
a truth that is capable of wide application. Every doc¬ 
trine which is to be apprehended by faith and not by 
speculative reason, must be verified by experience be¬ 
fore its truth can be realized. Christianity came into 
the world as an experimental science, saying to every 


CHRIST OUR SANCTIFICATION. 


12/ 


one, “ Come and see, test me and prove the truth of 
my divine origin, taste and see that the Lord Jesus is 
good.” This was the challenge with which the Son of 
God met all doubters. “ If any man willeth to do his 
will he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, 
or whether I speak of myself” (John vii. 17, Revised 
Version). A right attitude of the inquirer’s will is the 
indispensable condition of his success in his study of 
the Christian evidences. The culpability of unbelief lies 
in the absence of this obedient attitude of the will, the 
disposition to follow whithersoever truth may lead. 
Hence I preach that there is no such thing possible in 
God’s moral universe as permanent, honest doubt. At 
some point in the doubter’s history, truth has pointed 
to a path which he was not willing to tread. One re¬ 
fusal to follow his best light has spoiled forever after¬ 
wards the plea of honest scepticism. The relation of 
Christian truth to every human soul is that of a key to 
a lock. The gospel was constructed by omniscient 
wisdom to unlock every heart. Wherever it fails, when 
faithfully applied, to turn back the bolt of unbelief, the 
fault is not in the key, nor in the original structure of 
the lock, but in that tampering with the wards which is 
in the power of every free agent. God never made 
such a moral monstrosity as an intelligent soul incapa¬ 
ble of believing His truth. The aphorism of John 
Fletcher, “ All salvation is from God, all damnation is 
from man,” is really a moral axiom. Unbelief is damn¬ 
ing because it has a moral cause, the perverse will. 
When the will passes into a state of obedience, the 
soul emerges into the region of light. This law is as 


128 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


invariable as any in the physical world. Whenever 
there is a “ total, irreversible, affectionate self-surrender 
to Jesus Christ as both Saviour and Lord,” the Spirit 
of truth streams through and through the soul like a 
pencil of sunbeams, vitalizing, illumining, warming and 
cleansing. This statement is true in respect to all the 
stages of spiritual progress. Many have verified it in 
the joyful experience of the new birth, and many with 
gladness attest its truth in that spiritual uplift which 
has followed that all-surrendering faith which has laid 
hold of Christ as our entire sanctification from inbred 
sin. That uplift awaits all true believers in the Holy 
Spirit, the outpoured gift of our glorified Saviour. He 
is God’s elevator, moving from earth to heaven, lifting 
all who perfectly trust in Him from the low levels of 
fogs and damps to the sunlit summits of full assurance 
where the sun shines day and night. This is the 
“higher life,” to which all Christians are commanded 
to ascend. “Seek the things that are above.” When 
the believer steps into this elevator with perfect con¬ 
fidence in its safety and in the almighty Motor, it is 
astonishing to what altitudes he will be lifted instan¬ 
taneously while he does nothing but to trust. St. 
Paul prayed that the Ephesians “ might know what is 
the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who 
believe,” “the very same power” which God “wrought 
in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” God 
can do what He will with inert matter, because there is 
inherent in it no power to resist His fiat. But when 
the Omnipotent would mould the sinful human spirit 
into more than angelic beauty, into the beauty of His 


CHRIST OUR SANCTIFICATION. 


2 Q 


own moral likeness, He may be thwarted by the obsti¬ 
nate resistance of the free agent. He made man with¬ 
out his consent, but He cannot save him without his 
consent. When that consent is fully given, and the 
hand of faith is put forth to appropriate Christ to save 
unto the uttermost, then is experienced what St. Paul, by 
a strain of language itself, piling up words expressive 
of unlimited transforming energy, styles “ the exceed- 
ing greatness of, his power to usward who believe,” 
because He is able to do “ superabundantly above the 
greatest abundance.” (Adam Clarke.) 

One effect of this wonderful inward transfiguration is 
an astonishing quickening of the spiritual perceptions, 
so that the distant becomes near, the opaque trans¬ 
parent, and the indefinite and incomprehensible be¬ 
comes clearly defined and easily discerned by the 
anointed vision. Many are trying to see before they 
buy of Christ the divine eyesalve. Multitudes are ap¬ 
plying to spiritual things the wrong faculty of knowl¬ 
edge, reason instead of faith; with results as far from 
the truth as those which follow the attempt to distin¬ 
guish between pulverized sugar and fine salt, not by 
the taste but by the touch. 

Even the mystery of the trinal distinctions in the 
divine nature, although still inscrutable to reason, be¬ 
comes to the Spirit-baptized person a truth lifted for¬ 
ever beyond the region of doubt. Thus attested Dr. 
Wilbur Fisk ever after that personal Pentecost at Well- 
fleet camp-meeting, where he sought and found entire 
sanctification under a demonstration of the Spirit too 
great for the strength of the earthly tenement. This 


130 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


is the testimony of thousands who have exercised an 
all-consecrating trust in Christ for the full heritage of 
the sons of God this side of glory. 

“ Get into and see out ” is just what the astronomers 
did in order to get a true view of the solar system. 
For ages they strove to harmonize the retrograde mo¬ 
tions of some of the planets with the geocentric theory, 
but in vain. At length one of them dared in thought 
to take his stand in the sun and to look out upon the 
orbs wheeling through the heavens, when, lo, before 
his enraptured gaze was a perfectly harmonious system 
without one backward motion. Get out of the earth 
into the sun, and the solar system becomes heliocentric. 
Get out of self into God, and theology becomes chris- 
tocentric and beautifully consistent. One of the old 
divines had for his motto, “ It is the heart that makes 
the theologian.” Rutherford used to say to students 
for the ministry, “ If you would be a deep divine, I 
recommend to you sanctification,” and to all Christians, 
“ sanctification; sanctification will settle you most in 
the truth.” 

The faith requisite to entire sanctification is essen¬ 
tially the same as that which is the condition on which 
forgiveness of sin is received. 

It remains for us to discuss entire consecration, its 
nature and motives, as preliminary to the faith by 
which we are sanctified wholly. Motive is the word 
ordinarily used in speaking of the conditions of choice. 
We call it an inducement when it is adapted to excite 
the sensibilities, and we call it a reason when it is 
addressed to the intellect in the form of argument. 


CHRIST OUR SANCTIFICATION. 131 

The motive to entire consecration includes both, be¬ 
cause it is an appeal to all of man’s nature back of his 
will. We might bring out an array of various inferior 
motives to a perfect devotement of self unto God and 
His service, if we did not see that all motives to this act 
which are not comprised in one grand motive are too 
weak to deserve mention. They are such as these: 
fear of penalty, self-respect, a full and rounded develop¬ 
ment of our being by the stimulus communicated to the 
intellect when the love of God is perfected in the heart, 
greater usefulness, increased happiness, the honor which 
comes from God and good men and that greater reward 
which results from greater godliness. Without delay¬ 
ing to discuss these motives, mostly commendable but 
all of them combined inadequate, we proceed to pre¬ 
sent the motive presented by the inspired apostle, “ I 
beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of 
God.” The persons addressed are already Christians, 
for they are tenderly called “ brethren.” They are not 
plied with the threatenings of the law, because “There 
is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ 
Jesus.” They are no longer “ under the law ” as the 
impulse to service. Hence the lash of penalty cannot 
be wisely applied. It is not in harmony with the dic¬ 
tion of the New Testament to address threatenings to 
the sons of God. This is a servile motive. Children 
by adoption who hear within the cry “Abba, Father,” 
are on a higher plane. Yet this does not prove that 
they have reached spiritual perfection. It is the habit 
of St. Paul to exhort those who have already become 
sons and daughters to cleanse themselves from all 


32 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in 
filial reverence, not in guilty terror (II Cor. vii. i). 

“ The love of Christ constraineth us.” Love respon¬ 
sive to the self-sacrificing love of the Son of God is the 
only genuine motive to our complete self-surrender 
to Him, soul, body and spirit. The manward aspect 
of His atonement had this very design, the believer’s 
total consecration under the mighty impulse of grati¬ 
tude to his.great Benefactor. “He died for all, that 
they which live should no longer live unto themselves, 
but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again ” 
(II Cor. v. 15, Revised Version). Love, especially 
love to the unworthy and the sinful, awakens grati¬ 
tude, except where the noble capacity for gratitude 
has been utterly blasted by the mildew of depravity. 
Gratitude finds expression not only in word, but in 
service and devotion to the benefactor even unto death. 
The dreary annals of human selfishness in the form of 
wars and oppressions are here and there lighted up by 
instances of heroic self-sacrifice of souls struggling to 
express a gratitude too great for tongue or pen to 
utter. Hence we solemnly aver that the noblest act of 
which a man is capable is the total and irreversible con¬ 
secration to Christ of every atom of his being. When 
he has done this he will long for an enlarged capacity 
of loving service and sacrifice. 

The writer testifies, after drinking from this spring for 
half a century, and during the last twenty-seven years 
drinking to the fulness of his capacity, that he is to¬ 
day more athirst than ever for a larger vessel to con¬ 
tain the water of life. Not a few souls can bear wit¬ 
ness to this blessed paradox. 


THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 


133 


CHAPTER XVI. 


THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 


T HIS is the doctrine of assurance which Wesley did 
more to elucidate and to relieve of obscuring mis¬ 
apprehensions than any preceding theologian. 
He thus describes the direct witness of the Spirit as 
“an inward impression on the souls of believers, 
whereby the Spirit of God direct.y testifies to their 
spirit that they are children of God.” 

The indirect zvitness is an inference from the dis¬ 
cerned presence of the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, 
peace, etc., and it follows the direct witness in the 
order of time, “because,” says Wesley, “in the nature 
of the thing, the testimony must precede the fruit 
which springs from it.” The voice of the Spirit within 
the believer is to all who know God the most real of 
all realities. It is sometimes called a seal which secures, 
authenticates and appropriates. 

The Holy Spirit is God’s seal. “Ye were sealed with 
[not by] that Holy Spirit of promise ” (Eph. i. 13). An¬ 
other metaphorical designation of the witness of the 
Spirit is “the earnest of the Spirit.” The earnest is 
derived from mercantile usage traceable through the 
Romans and Greeks to the Phoenicians, the founders of 
commerce. It assures the fulfilment of a promise as a 
part of the purchase money paid in advance to bind the 
bargain, or as an instalment of a servant’s wages paid 
at the time of hiring, obliging the servant to render the 


34 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


service and the master to pay the rest of the wages after 
the work has been done. It places both parties in a 
position to enforce the contract. The buyer, if he does 
not take the goods, forfeits the money advanced, and 
the servant who fails to render the service must refund 
the earnest which he has taken. The master who re¬ 
pents of his bargain must lose the wage advanced, and 
the merchant who withholds the goods because the 
market price has risen, or for any other reason, must 
repay the money advanced. The phrase “ earnest of 
the Spirit ” occurs only twice in the New Testament. 
Grammatically “the Spirit” is in apposition with “ear¬ 
nest,” meaning that the pledge consists in the Holy Spirit 
bestowed upon the believer and dwelling in his heart. 
“And gave us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” 
(II Cor. i. 22 ). There is no hint here of the time when 
the full wage will be paid, although in Eph. i. 14 it is 
“ until the redemption of the purchased possession.” 
Those who take a narrow view of present Christian 
privilege and put the fruition of the promises after 
death interpret the earnest only of the fulness of joy 
in heaven. But I believe that it is a pledge and a fore¬ 
taste not only of heaven hereafter, but of a present 
heaven attainable by faith — even the fulness of the 
Holy Spirit. 

“ By mistaking the earnest for the fulness we run 
the risk,” says Joseph Parker, “of stating incomplete 
truths as final revelations.” The earnest of the Spirit 
is the assurance of the fulness of the Spirit in this life, 
and in the future life it is a right to drink evermore of 
“ the river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding- 
out of the throne of God and of the Lamb ” (Rev. 
xxii. 1, Revised Version). The fulness is certainly 


THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 135 

promised in this life; it is prayed for by Paul for be¬ 
lievers, and it was enjoyed by many in the apostolic 
church, and there have been some witnesses to this 
experience in every subsequent generation. From its 
very beginning the normal regenerate life is a continu¬ 
ous progression in spirituality, arithmetical if not ge¬ 
ometrical, receiving with its widening capacities richer 
gifts of the wisdom and holiness of God. 

“ New births of grace new raptures bring; 

Triumphant the new song we sing, 

The great Renewer bless. 

Darkness and dread we leave behind, 

New light, new glory still we find, 

New realms divine possess.” 

With respect to the obligation which the earnest of 
the Spirit lays on its recipient, it has been well said 
that it is a lien upon the future service of the receiver. 
If the service be unperformed, the earnest will be with¬ 
drawn ; whereas if the service be lovingly rendered with 
the whole might of the heart, the measure of the gift 
will be filled up even to the sanctification of the whole 
body, soul and spirit. The Church is in its infancy as 
to the realization of spiritual blessing, as mankind is 
in babyhood in its application of electricity to human 
utilities. To what surpassing altitudes will the individ¬ 
ual believer and the Church as a whole be lifted when 
the gift of the Spirit is fully realized and appropriated. 

“ Spirit, who makest all things new, 

Thou leadest onward ; we pursue 
The heavenly march sublime. 

’Neath Thy renewing fires we glow, 

And still from strength to strength we go, 

From height to height we climb.” 


136 THE: GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Another very instructive property of the earnest is 
to be noted in the fact that beyond the idea of security 
it implies identity in kind. If the earnest is paid in sil¬ 
ver, the whole will be paid in silver. If the earnest is 
in gold, the wages will be golden. If the earnest in the 
case of the believer in Jesus Christ is the Holy Spirit, 
then the fulness of the blessed Comforter will be his 
portion in this life and his eternal reward. This is the 
Old Testament promise, “ I am thy exceeding great re¬ 
gard.” Hence we need not die to know what are the 
felicities of saints in heaven. They flow from the same 
fountain from which we are drinking in this world — 
“ the joy of the Holy Ghost.” The bliss of the Old 
Testament and of the New, of earth and heaven, is the 
same. To all spiritual intelligences God is a satisfying 
portion. 

‘ ‘ There is a stream which issues forth 
From God’s eternal throne, 

And from the Lamb — a living stream, 

Clear as the crystal stone. 

The stream doth water Paradise, 

It makes the angels sing: 

One cordial drop revives my heart; 

Hence all my joys do spring.” 

John Mason. 

This doctrine of the immediate contact of God’s 
Spirit with my spirit, without the medium of symbol or 
sacrament or absolving priest, does not rest upon one, 
two or three cardinal proof texts, but upon a wide vari¬ 
ety of scriptural proofs, such as the communion of the 
Holy Spirit, the revelation of Christ within the soul, 
the knowledge of God, the strengthened form of the 
Greek epignosis , clear, certain, thorough and perfect 


THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 


137 


knowledge of Christ, a favorite term with both Paul and 
Peter, together with plerophoria , full assurance, excluding 
all doubt. Count up the many times in John’s first 
Epistle in which he says “ we know,” and add the 
stronger words, “ye all know,” instead of “ye know all 
things ” (I John ii. 20), found in the Revised Version mar¬ 
gin and the text of Westcott and Hort, and our reader 
will see the broad basis on which this doctrine stands. 

The direct witness of the Spirit is intermittent in 
most young Christians. Before the fulness of the Spirit 
is received there are only occasional gleams of light 
through the rifted clouds, followed by sunless intervals 
when doubts distract and harass the soul. The cry of 
such Christians when seeking the abiding witness, the 
indwelling Comforter, is voiced by Charles Wesley, who 
alone among all the versifiers of the eighteenth century 
gave due prominence to the Holy Spirit; “the author,” 
says James Montgomery, “ of a great number of the 
best hymns in the English or any other language.” 
The superiority of the permanent to the transient wit¬ 
ness of the Spirit is thus finely expressed : 

4 4 O that the Comforter would come ! 

Nor visit as a transient guest, 

But fix in me His constant home, 

And take possession of my breast, 

And make my soul His loved abode, 

The temple of indwelling God ! ” 

In another hymn he prays to the Spirit in these 
words : 

44 Spirit of love, return 

To every troubled breast, 

And comfort us who mourn 
For permanence of rest. 


138 THE GOSPEL Of* THE COMFORTER. 

Thou often visitest Thine own; 

But in an hour or day 

Our transitory guest is gone, 

Our joy is fled away. 

“ O might we always know 
The Father reconciled! 

Set up Thy throne below 
In each adopted child.” 

This alternation of experience from sunshine to shadow 
affords occasion for the temptation to cast away our con¬ 
fidence in Christ and to abandon His service. Many 
yield to this suggestion of Satan and go back to the 
world instead of climbing to altitudes above the clouds. 
Some are told by stationary and retrograde Christians 
that they will never be so happy as they were when 
they first entered the kingdom of God. This dismal 
outlook upon the future intensifies the temptation with 
which they are wrestling. Hence it is not surprising 
that not a few young converts turn away from Jesus and 
walk no more with Him. They should have been told 
that in the normal Christian experience “ it is better 
farther on.” It is to be regretted that there are so few 
normal Christians who are at hand to give the discour¬ 
aged convert this word of good cheer. Many profess¬ 
ors of faith in Christ are living on so low a level amid 
the miasmas and fogs that they never have even a 
glimpse of the sunny spiritual uplands, 

‘ ‘ Where dwells the Lord our Righteousness, 

And keeps His own in perfect peace 
And everlasting rest.” 

It is a great mistake to bring a young convert into an 
unspiritual and worldly church. It is like laying a new¬ 
born babe on the breast of a dead mother for nutriment 


THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 


139 


and growth. Hence we deprecate the promotion of 
conversions to increase the membership of a dead 
church. It is like enlarging a graveyard. A healthful 
revival always begins, not outside of the church, but 
within it. Zion must herself travail before living chil¬ 
dren are born. Some unwise pastors, in their eagerness 
to swell the number of church members, try to awaken 
sinners over the heads of a slumbering church, whom 
they dislike to awaken lest they should be displeased. 
Men awakened suddenly are usually not kindly disposed 
toward those who arouse them. 

The result of many modern revivals is to multiply the 
number of those who are strangers to the direct witness 
of the Spirit to their adoption into the family of God 
by the new birth. Another result is that those who do 
receive this divine witness and retain Him intermit¬ 
tently find few to counsel and encourage them when' 
ecstatic emotion subsides and they are called to walk by 
naked faith alone without feeling. 

Our advice to all who have occasional gleams of sun¬ 
shine through the rifted clouds, with intervals of doubt 
and incertitude, is, to ascertain the cause of this intermit- 
tency, and to remove it as soon as possible. For the 
cause is not, as some teach, in the sovereign will, but in 
ourselves. To this declaration the only exception is 
some physical condition into which we have been 
brought by divine Providence, such as a prostrated 
nervous system, or a concussion of the brain, depress¬ 
ing the mind and obstructing conscious access to Christ. 
The Christian, by thorough self-examination, should 
assure himself that no sinful act has veiled his inward 
vision of God. Then he may patiently and believingly 
wait for the veil to be lifted again, and continue to be 


140 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


lifted so long as he has a firm grip on the promises of 
God. For where sin is absent the Spirit’s witness is 
intermittent, because faith is wavering. Hence the 
remedy is a greater familiarity with the Word and a 
constant personal appropriation of the full heritage of 
the believer, especially the great gift of the Comforter. 
When the Third Person of the adorable Trinity is fully 
received, or, rather, when He fully possesses us, there 
is no more interruption of His testimony to our sonship 
to God. For He is now the abiding witness. Ecstatic 
joy may come and go as the tides ebb and flow, but 
peace and assurance abide forever, as Miss Havergal so 
truthfully sings : 

‘ ‘ Like a river glorious 

Is God’s perfect peace.” 

We advise the believer who does not dwell on the 
bank of this beautiful river to gather together the prom¬ 
ises of Christ respecting the abiding of the Paraclete 
found in His last address before His death, recorded in 
the 14th, 15th and 16th chapters of St. John, and the 
numerous references to the same glorious theme in St. 
Paul’s epistles, and especially in the First Epistle of St. 
John, where the mutual abiding is taught, “ God in us, 
and we in God.” In such a spiritual life, filled and in¬ 
terpenetrated by God, there can be no hiatus, no vacuum, 
and no place for doubt. 

Where vital interests are at stake it is very comfort¬ 
ing to know that we are on the winning side. Calmness 
and comfort came to the two hundred and seventy-six 
storm-driven souls on the coast of Melita when Paul 
stood forth and uttered the cheering message from God, 
“There shall be no loss of life among you.” This 
seemed to be a non-forfeitable life-insurance policy, 


THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. I4I 

representing the Calvinian assurance of faith, uncondi¬ 
tional because it is grounded on the decree of election 
and the assumed perseverance of the saints. But Paul 
made an important addendum to his prediction. When 
the tricky sailors were stealing the lifeboat to make 
good their own escape, that Roman prisoner, who had 
an angel for a cabin mate the night before, stood up 
again and said to the military custodian, “ Except these 
abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.” This illustrates 
the Arminian conception of the assurance of eternal 
salvation. It rests upon the small word^z /1 If the 
Christian perseveringly believes, he will be saved. 
Methodists, however, apply the term “ assurance ” to 
the consciousness of present salvation. It is the un¬ 
doubted conviction of deliverance, here and now, from 
the guilt of sin and from the love of sin. Our doctrine 
of assurance is grounded on the direct witness of the 
Spirit, and not on the Word, as some assert, for it can¬ 
not certify the fact of my adoption. It is the office of 
the Spirit to give assurance of this fact by crying in our 
hearts, not in the Bible, “ Abba, Father.” But doubt¬ 
less the inquirer who requests me to discuss this vital 
theme desires a more exact definition. It is not easy 
to explain spiritual realities in human language. It is 
a transaction wholly in the realm of spirit, invisible to 
the natural eye and inscrutable to the human mind. It 
is “the white stone and the new name written, which 
no man knoweth saving him that receiveth it.” The 
direct witness is of the nature of a spiritual intuition, 
the voice of mercy speaking comfort to the troubled 
soul. 

If you ask for the manner of this divine communica¬ 
tion, I must reply, “ The wind bloweth where it listeth,” 


142 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


The manner of all knowledge is a mystery the at¬ 
tempted solution of which has given birth to all the 
philosophies, materialism, realism and idealism. In all 
communications from one mind to another there is the 
same mystery. The thought in my consciousness is 
conveyed to yours along a path which the wisest phi¬ 
losophers are unable to map out in their psychologies. 
Yet the mother looking down with a smile into the 
eyes of the babe a month old awakens a responsive 
smile. She has laid a cable to that little island and 
flashed the message of a mother’s love. Cannot God 
do as much to a lost child seeking His face ? Cannot 
He who made man unmistakably reveal Himself to 
him ? Yes, assuredly. The manner is a speculative 
question which may be omitted, while we proceed to 
answer more practical questions. 

Do we need any other evidence besides the direct 
witness of the Spirit to our adoption? Yes, we need 
the indirect witness, the confirmatory proof of the gen¬ 
uineness of the Spirit’s testimony; for a person may 
imagine some flash of his own fancy to be the voice of 
the Spirit. This is the way fanatics are made. 

What is the safeguard? The fruit of the Spirit per¬ 
ceived as existing in us — “ love, joy, peace,” and the 
whole train as in Gal. v. 22. These are the marks of 
the regenerate state, and are needful not only for the 
purpose just mentioned, but also to sustain the believer 
when the direct testimony is obscured. There are 
cloudy days in the spiritual realm, when the sun is 
veiled and there is no ray of direct light. Then it is 
comfortable to walk in the light reflected from the 
clouds. In early Christian experience the direct wit¬ 
ness is frequently intermittent. Then the indirect wit- 


THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 


143 


ness is of immense value to keep one from casting away 
his confidence in Christ. If one says that he has the 
direct witness of the Spirit to his adoption and contin¬ 
ues to commit sin, he shows that he has not that saving 
faith that gives victory over the world. When Gavazzi, 
the great Italian orator, was last in America, he preached 
in my pulpit on justification by faith. His singular 
pronunciation riveted one sentence in my memory : “ If 
a man says that he is youstified by faith and keeps 
right on sinning just the same as before, his youstifica- 
tion is a mistake.” 

The advantages of the direct witness are, salvation 
from doubt on fundamentals, certainty with respect to 
adoption and forgiveness, the joy of the Lord and the 
strength which always springs therefrom. It is the 
secret of Methodism and the source of her aggressive 
spirit and power. It gives positiveness and convincing 
cogency to testimony. Conscious salvation attested by 
the voice of the Spirit crying “Abba, Father,” is a great 
safeguard against apostasy—'the greatest next to the 
Spirit’s work in entire sanctification. A sudden con¬ 
version, bright and joyful, is a towering monument in 
the memory. It is a rebuke to the backslider so long 
as memory is unshaken. A slave lad in the South was 
under a deep conviction for sin several months. At 
length his Christian mistress said to him: “ Sambo, I 
think you have experienced religion, because you do 
nothing wicked ; your life is greatly changed.” To this 
the boy made this wise answer: “ Not so, Missus. I 
don’t want dat ar kind of religion that I can get and not 
know it, ’cause I might lose it and not miss it.” A 
Christian life which has no spiritual birthday anniver¬ 
sary is not to be discounted or rated as spurious, for 


144 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


many are converted, especially children, without such 
a marked and memorable transition ; but the ideal new 
birth of the New Testament, since the day of Pente¬ 
cost, has a date to it which only the direct witness of 
the Spirit can impress on the mind. 

But this suggests another question which perplexes 
many : Is it necessary to salvation ? We have already 
hinted that an inference from the marks of the new 
birth found in us cannot save from doubt. Eternal 
salvation depends on faith in Christ. “He that be- 
lieveth has the witness in himself.” St. John, whom 
we quote, does not say whether this is direct or indi¬ 
rect and inferential. Some kind of evidence will follow 
saving faith. It may not always be joyful, or even sat¬ 
isfactory. It may be weak and only occasional. There 
are well-authenticated instances where persons have for 
years doubted their regeneration, and yet have lived on 
the right side of their doubts by fearing God and work¬ 
ing righteousness. They were servants of God, as 
John Wesley was until he was thirty-five years old, 
when he emerged into conscious sonship. This he 
called his conversion, and wrote himself down in his 
journal as “a child of wrath, an heir of hell,” till that 
event. But he afterwards annotated his journal thus: 
“ I believe not. I had even then the faith of a servant 
and not of a son.” To the passage,which declares that 
he was not converted himself when he went to convert 
the Indians, he appended as a note : “ I am not sure of 
this. I was a servant and safe, but knew it not; but 
now I am a son and safe and know it.” His final teach¬ 
ing on this point is this : “ I have not for many years 
thought a consciousness of acceptance to be essential to 
justifying faith.” He ascribes the absence of assurance 


THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 


H5 


in exceptional cases “either to bodily disorder, or to 
ignorance of the gospel promises.” These exceptions 
under Methodist preaching in his day were rare in¬ 
deed. He says that ninety-nine out of every hundred 
could tell the day of their regeneration by the Holy 
Spirit.* 

The two witnesses. I. We are taught in Rom. viii. 
16 that “the Spirit himself beareth witness with our 
spirit that we are children of God.” The first is the 
divine testimony in every normal religious experience, 
a simple, undoubted, satisfactory and sometimes very 
joyful assurance, like an intuition, by which we are noti¬ 
fied as from some outer source, and made to feel that 
all is blessedly right between God and our own soul, 
that His wrath is turned away and He loves us. This 
comes in answer to the prayer of faith, and in direc¬ 
tion as if from the God to whom we pray and the 
Christ in whom we trust. Should a disobedient son 
speak through a telephone to his distant father asking 
his pardon, and receive through that wonderful instru¬ 
ment the words “ My son, I fully forgive you,” would he 
doubt that his father was reconciled ? But the pardoned 
sinner who hears the Spirit crying in his heart, “Abba, 
Father,” experiences the filial feeling suddenly warming 
his inmost soul, something the earthly father could not 
transmit by electricity. This the heavenly Father 
transmits by the Spirit of adoption. 

2. The witness of our own spirit is inferential. We 
note the marks of the new birth as found in the Bible; 
then looking into our own hearts, consciousness dis¬ 
cerns these marks, and thus lays down the premises for 
our inference that we are regenerated and adopted into 

* See Appendix, Note G. 


146 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


the family of God. Thus the second witness is a self¬ 
judgment confirming the first. 

Both are necessary and both should be constant. 
But the first is often intermittent in those in whom the 
fulness of the Spirit does not abide. 


TWO RECEPTIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 


47 


CHAPTER XVII. 

CHRIST’S TWO RECEPTIONS AND TWO BESTOWALS 
OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

Section i. The Two Receptions of the Spirit . 

J ESUS on the day of His baptism by John received 
the Holy Spirit in a manner which indicated that 
it was a permanent and not a transitory gift, for 
the Spirit descended and abode upon Him. A second 
reception of the Holy Spirit took place after His ascen¬ 
sion (Acts ii. 33). The differences of these recep¬ 
tions we may not be able to point out. But since the 
earthly life of Jesus is an example for His disciples, it is 
important to know just what the Spirit did for Him and 
whether we may expect Him to do the same for us. 

We now come to the question, What did the first re¬ 
ception or anointing of the Spirit do for Jesus as a man ? 
It certainly was not His entire sanctification, for He was 
perfectly sinless. It was something more than a visible 
consecration or setting apart for the work of the world’s 
redemption. God does not do merely spectacular deeds. 
The form of a dove was designed for human spectators, 
but the reality, the descent of the personal Holy Spirit 
and His permanent abiding, was an uplift in the life of 
the Son of God on the earth and a special enduement 
for the work of redemption. From that hour He went 
forth in the power of the Spirit. His perfect manhood 
needed this enduement for the successful accomplish¬ 
ment of His mission. If this be true, does not every 


148 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


man an-d every woman need, in addition to perfect puri¬ 
fication, the same empowerment for life’s mission ? For 
we believe with Dr. Bushnell, that God has a plan for 
every person’s life, a work for every one to achieve. 
Moreover, we believe that this plan, if realized, will se¬ 
cure two ends, God’s highest glory and our highest hap¬ 
piness. What a prerogative of personality it is that I, 
a creature, may advance the glory of the infinite Creator 
by reflecting His moral attributes and by giving a race 
of sinners a more worthy conception of His character! 
This can be done only by the fulness of the Holy Spirit 
exalting, intensifying and guiding our mental and moral 
faculties. Even entirely sanctified souls cannot depend 
on their unaided natural energies. Such souls are like 
the telegraph wire along which the lightning can flash, 
and not like a storage battery of electrical power. By 
the baptism of the Spirit, Jesus became such a battery. 
Many a Christian worker has failed to put on power, or 
has lost both native and divinely imparted power, by 
erroneously trusting to himself as a reservoir. The 
truth cannot be too strongly accentuated, that only when 
the human spirit is indwelt by the divine Spirit does it 
attain that clear insight, that emotional fervor, that 
spontaneity and maximum energy of will for which his 
Maker designed him. It is possible to avail ourselves 
of a power not of ourselves and to do things impossible 
to ourselves. We cannot stand in Boston and with the 
aid of our natural voice converse with a friend in Chicago. 
But by utilizing a subtle and mysterious power called 
electricity I can perform that miracle. My speaking 
into the telephone and placing the receiver to my ear, 
thus connecting me with that unknown force, is an act 
of faith. It is impossible for me by my own energy to 


TWO RECEPTIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 


149 


transport myself from Boston to New York in five hours. 
But I can by entering an express car subject myself to 
a power to do the impossible. This is an act of faith. 

“ All things are possible to God ” and to him who is 
linked to God. Faith is the link. Hence “all things 
are possible to him who believeth.” Hence I am ac¬ 
countable not only for what I can do, but also for what 
I plus available omnipotence can do. I attain my 
maximum power and answer the end of my creation 
only when I am to my utmost capacity filled with God 
by the fulness of the Holy Spirit. This important truth 
many fail to realize. 

In the reception of the Holy Spirit by Jesus there are 
three notable stages. The first was the work of the 
Spirit in the creation of His humanity, in the miraculous 
conception which obviated the possibility of contracting 
any transmitted corruption from Adam, for He was the 
second Adam, the first term in a new series, while He 
was, by His birth from Mary, within the human family 
as a kinsman — Redeemer. The fact that “the child 
grew and waxed strong, filled with wisdom, and that the 
grace of God was upon him,” is a sufficient proof that 
He was filled with the Spirit, as Luke ii. 40 intimates, 
which in His early years imparted the consciousness of 
His divine Sonship and redemptive mission. 

The second and enlarged reception of the Spirit was 
at His baptism or anointing for His public office of 
Messiah. Here was an external manifestation of the 
Three Persons of the Trinity : the voice of the anoint¬ 
ing Father was heard; the anointed Son and the unc¬ 
tion, the anointing oil, the dove symbolizing the Holy 
Spirit, were seen. The abiding of the dove on the 
head of Jesus is noted by John the Baptist as the fulfil- 


I 5° 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


ment of a prophetic sign, “the Spirit of Jehovah shall 
rest upon him ” (Isa. xi. 2). As the Son of God He 
may not have needed this anointing. But as the Son of 
man, made like unto His brethren to fit Him for His 
mediatorial work, which included a perfect example for 
His disciples, that unction was requisite for His com¬ 
plete qualification to be the Saviour of the world. 

It is worthy of remark that this visible display of the 
Trinity, and especially this descent of the Holy Spirit, 
took place while Jesus was praying to his Father prob¬ 
ably for the greatest gift that He could send or that 
men could receive, the long-promised prophetic gift of 
the Spirit (Luke iii. 21). 

Henceforth His “ commandments unto the apostles 
whom he had chosen were given through the Holy 
Ghost ” (Acts i. 2). His miraculous activity dates from 
His baptism with the Spirit. “The Spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus ” may be regarded as the source of all His 
actions, and especially of that wonderful symmetry and 
balance of character, combining in perfection the most 
opposite qualities—boldness and meekness, self-asser¬ 
tion with deep humility, piety and impenitence, omnip¬ 
otence and non-resistance, as described in Dr. Horace 
Bushnell’s celebrated tenth chapter of his “ Nature and 
the Supernatural,” in which he constructs an absolutely 
unanswerable “argument for Christianity as a super¬ 
natural institution.” 

The third reception of the Holy Spirit by Jesus Christ 
was after His ascension : “ Therefore being by the right 
hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father 
the promise of the Holy Ghost”—that is, the prom¬ 
ised Holy Ghost — “he hath shed forth this, which ye 
now see and hear ” (Acts ii. 33). 


TWO RECEPTIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 


51 


This final reception of the Paraclete and His bestow- 
ment on all believers demonstrates several vital truths : 

1. It is a fulfilment of prophecy. It is true that the 
Old Testament prophets speak so obscurely of the res¬ 
urrection of the Messiah that the Jews did not, before 
the fact, interpret them as relating to that event (Ps. 
ii. 7 ; xvi. 10 ; Isa. liii. 10; Hosea vi. 2). But that 
glorious event is implied in the clear and undoubted 
predictions of the ascension gift, the reception of which 
is so distinctly foretold in Ps. xlv. 7: “Therefore God, 
thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness 
above thy fellows.” The anointing oil typifies the 
Holy Spirit. The ascension gifts are more clearly fore¬ 
told in Ps. lxviii. 18: “Thou hast ascended on high, 
. . . thou hast received gifts for men; ” to the world 
the spirit of conviction, and to believers the Spirit of 
adoption and sanctification, the Spirit of love made per¬ 
fect, and the fountain of joy, an artesian “well of water 
springing up unto eternal life.” We are told in John vii. 
37-39 that the “rivers of living water” so frequently 
foretold by Isaiah as breaking out in the desert figura¬ 
tively describe the Spirit, whose joyful and abundant 
effusion awaited the glorification of the ascended Christ. 

2. It is a vindication of His righteous character. 
On earth He was accused of sin, of Sabbath breaking, 
of associating with sinners, of blasphemy, of non-con¬ 
formity to the Jews’ religion. They condemned Him 
to die with malefactors. What a reversal of that sen¬ 
tence it would be if news should come down from 
heaven that the condemned culprit of Calvary had been 
received in the court of heaven and had been crowned 
Lord of all the heavenly hosts ! The descent of the 
Paraclete promised by Jesus when He should have gone 


152 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


to the Father is a positive proof that He has reached the 
throne of the universe and has been glorified. The gift 
of the Holy Spirit is a certificate of His holiness while 
on the earth. His going to the Father demonstrates 
His righteousness (John xvi. io). 

3. It is a reward for His self-sacrifice. “ Looking 
unto Jesus, . . . who for the joy that was set before him 
endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down 
at the right hand of the throne of God.” 

4. As a credential of His Messiahship and supreme 
divinity. Previous to His resurrection the Spirit had 
been bestowed as a personal gift. Now the power to 
bestow Him upon others, held in abeyance till after 
His resurrection and ascension, has full exercise — “a 
blessing so momentous that it may be described as that 
in which all other blessings are included.” 

None but God can fathom God. But “ the Spirit 
searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. The 
things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God ” 
(I Cor. ii. 10, 11). This omniscience of the Holy 
Spirit argues His divinity. Hence the power and pre¬ 
rogative of imparting Him demonstrates the Godhead 
of the Giver. This is the culminating proof of the 
divinity of our Saviour, even towering above His resur¬ 
rection from the dead. What scriptural proof have we 
that the coronation gift, as a credential of divinity, was 
the Paraclete, or rather the power to bestow Him upon 
men ? In the first place, we have the assurance that the 
Son would “pray the Father for the gift of another 
Paraclete” for His disciples. This implies that the 
Comforter was not then communicable. In Heb. i. 8, 
when the Son of God is anointed above His fellows — 
all other kings—“ he is addressed twice, at least once, 


TWO RECEPTIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 


153 


in the vocative as God" (Delitzsch) : “Thy throne, O 
God, is forever. . . . Thou lovest righteousness, and 
hatest iniquity; therefore, O God, hath thy God 
anointed thee,” etc. 

5. “Declared to be the Son of God with power, 
according to the Spirit of holiness y by the resurrection 
from the dead” (Rom. i. 4). The weight of scholarly 
exegesis is that the spirit of holiness is not the personal 
Holy Spirit, but the divine nature of our Lord. But 
it seems very much like a Hebraism for the Holy Spirit, 
whose effusion after Christ’s resurrection supplied the 
most conclusive evidence of His supreme divinity. “ The 
effusion of the Spirit on the apostles and on the Church 
terminated the controversy whether He was the Son of 
God. The communication of the Holy Spirit — a gift 
competent to no created being — proved Him to be the 
Messiah and the Son of God, according to His own 
claim ” (John v. 19).* Our position in reference to 
this text is strongly confirmed by Paul’s declaration 
that a personal Pentecost is an experience necessary to 
the reception of the doctrine of the Gbdhead of Christ. 
“ No man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit ” 
(1 Cor. xii. 3). 

John implies the same idea in 1 John ii. 18-20, where 
he predicts that many antichrists , or deniers of Christ’s 
divinity, will come. Then he says, the same as to pre¬ 
dict that the persons addressed would hold fast to that 
fundamental truth, “ But ye have an unction [or chrism ] 
from the Holy One,” in contrast to the antichrists who 
left Christ and became antichrists because they had not 
the sanctifying chrism , the Holy Spirit. 

One acquainted with the original tongues of the 

* Professor Smeaton Cunningham, “ Lectures,” 1882, page 72. 


154 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Bible has a perpetual memorial of Christ’s fulness of 
the Holy Spirit in the Hebrew title “ Messiah,” and in 
Greek, “Christ the Anointed.” He very early in His 
ministry makes a brief allusion to the future gift of the 
Spirit to the individual believer, in the words which Dr. 
Pope styles “ the dawn of Pentecost.” “ How much 
more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit 
to them that ask him.” Matthew reports the same 
saying of Christ, except that “good things ” are instead 
of “ the Holy Spirit.” The two reports are harmonized 
by the idea that the Holy Spirit comprises all spiritual 
blessings. 

6. As a complete endowment of Christ’s mystical 
body, the Church. The reception of the Spirit by 
Jesus on the banks of the Jordan was for His personal 
equipment for His earthly mission. His reception of 
the Paraclete at the right hand of the Father, en¬ 
throned as the world’s Redeemer, in answer to His 
prayer (John xiv. 16), is for the conditional full equip¬ 
ment of His Church as an army commissioned to con¬ 
quer the whole world. The condition is that faith 
which bears the fruit of love and obedience (John xiv. 
15-17). Says Dr. C. H. Parkhurst: “There were no 
completed Christians till Pentecost, and there can be 
no completed Christians with the cessation of Pente¬ 
cost. There was no Church till Pentecost, and a 
Church without a Holy Spirit is as much a delusion as 
a Church without a Christ.” 

Section 2. Christ's Two Bestowals of the Spirit. 

As there were two receivings of the Holy Spirit by 
Jesus, so there were two impartations to His disciples* 
one on the evening of the day of His resurrection and the 


TWO RECEPTIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 


155 


other on the day of Pentecost. The exact import of 
these two receptions and bestowals has not been re¬ 
vealed. Yet it seems desirable that the two gifts of the 
Spirit to the disciples should be brought into harmony 
with each other and with the apostolical doctrine of the of¬ 
fices of the Spirit in the present dispensation. Clearness 
of doctrine is intimately related to unity of faith and 
uniformity in practice. We cannot accept the theory 
that the breath of Christ did not in any sense communi¬ 
cate the Spirit, but. rather that it was a symbol and 
prophecy of the future Pentecostal gift. We prefer to 
say that something real was imparted, but far less than 
the fulness of the Spirit. “To understand John xx. 22 
as the outpouring of the Spirit, the fulfilment of the 
promise of the Comforter, is against all consistency, 
and most against John himself; see vii. 39 and xvi.7.” 
(Alford.) To understand it rightly, we have merely to 
refer to that great key to the meaning of so many dark 
passages of Scripture, the progress of doctrine in the 
New Testament. Christ’s presence in that hour was a 
slight fulfilment, an earnest, of His manifest coming 
and permanent abiding in them by His representative, 
the Paraclete. This corresponds to the witness of 
adoption as stated in Paul’s epistles, especially Rom. 
viii. 16 and Gal. iv. 6. It is quite evident that the 
apostles were previous to this hour in a state of 
salvation, but as servants rather than sons crying 
“ Abba, Father.” In the high-priestly prayer in John 
xvii. they are spoken of as given to Christ, as having 
kept His word, as having all been kept, except the son 
of perdition, and as being “ not of the world, even as I 
am not of the world,” twice declared. This manifestly 
demonstrates that they were in a state of acceptance 


156 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

with God, but like all the Old Testament saints, des¬ 
titute of the gospel blessing of the direct witness of. 
the Spirit to divine adoption, the special prerogative 
of New Testament believers (John i. 12). That the 
disciples were already born again and were then in 
possession of spiritual life, may be inferred from the 
words of Paul, “ The natural man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit,” and the declaration of Christ Him¬ 
self respecting the Spirit of truth, “whom the world 
cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither know- 
eth him : but ye know him.” 

Bengel well says that this bestowment of the Spirit is 
“the earnest of Pentecost.” “ It belongs to the peculi¬ 
arities of the miraculous intermediate condition in which 
Jesus was, that He, the bearer of the Spirit (John iii. 34), 
could already impart a special first fruit , whilst the full 
outpotiring , the baptism of the Spirit, remained attached 
to His exaltation.” (Meyer’s Commentary.) 

It is not derogatory to the apostles to say that they 
were up to this hour servants rather than conscious of 
sonship to God. Says John Wesley, who spoke from ex¬ 
perience : “ There may be foretastes of joy, of peace, of 
love, and those not delusive, but really from God, long 
before we have the witness in ourselves ; yea, there may 
be a degree of longsuffering, of gentleness, of fidelity, 
meekness and temperance (self-control) (not a shadow 
thereof, but a real degree, by the preventing [preceding 
sonship] grace of God), before we ‘ are accepted in the 
Beloved,’ and, consequently, before we have the testi¬ 
mony of our acceptance : but it is by no means advisable 
to rest here ; it is at the peril of our souls if we do.” 

This gift of assurance by the initial gift of the Holy 
Spirit was very timely. The day of Pentecost was seven 


TWO RECEPTIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 


157 


weeks distant in the future. Suddenly bereft of the 
constant companionship of their Teacher and Lord, they 
needed special strength to keep them from fainting in 
spirit during this interval. Moreover, they needed the 
capacity to lay aside their worldly conception of the 
Messiah’s kingdom and to begin to take in the new and 
spiritual view of that kingdom. The witness of the 
Spirit would enable the disciples to mount up with 
wings as eagles, to run and not be weary, and to walk 
and not faint, during this period of transition and sus¬ 
pense before the Spirit in His fulness should be poured 
out. “This gift,” says Alford, “belongs to the Church 
in all ages, and especially to those who by legitimate 
appointment are set to minister in the churches of 
Christ, not by successive delegation from the apostles, of 
which fiction I find no trace in the New Testament. That 
no formal gifts of apostle ship were now conferred , is plain 
by the absence of Thomas , who in that case would be no 
apostle in the same sense in which the rest were.” 

The experts are divided in their decision respecting 
the tense of the verb to be in John xiv. 17. Meyer in¬ 
sists that “the preponderance of witnesses favors the 
future as in our Authorized Version, ‘and shall be in 
you.’ ” These witnesses include the two uncial MSS., 
the Sinaitic and the Alexandrine; also the Parisian, 
the Vulgate, and the critical editions of Tischendorf, 
McLellan and Dr. B. Weiss. Westcott and Hort put 
a doubtful present tense, “ is in you.” The only uncial 
MS. which has this reading is the Codex Vaticanus; 
critical editions of Lachmann and Tregelles also have 
the present tense. But we are inclined to the reading 
of the future, “ and shall be in you.” How the Spirit 
was with the disciples and not in them may be ex- 


158 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

plained by the fact that Christ, whose infinite capacity 
monopolized the Spirit, was with them, and so the Spirit 
was with them in His person. But this monopoly 
Christ did not carry to heaven in His ascension. “ He 
breathed on his disciples, and saith unto them, Receive 
ye the Holy Ghost.” This they needed to sustain their 
faith in the interval between His resurrection and the 
full outpouring of the Spirit at the coming Pentecost. 

Some writers assert that the work of the Holy Spirit 
in the human nature of Jesus Christ is the norm or 
pattern of His work in the believer. This is true only 
in part. His humanity was endowed at His baptism 
by the Spirit with strength to do the redemptive work 
of suffering and death to which He was called (Heb. ix. 
14). Thus the disciples at Pentecost were begirded 
with strength to unfold and proclaim the remedial 
scheme in the face of persecution and martyrdom at 
the hands of both Jews and Gentiles. But here the 
parallel ends, for the first great work of the Spirit in 
men is the destruction of sin, from which Jesus was 
perfectly free. He was sanctified in the sense of being 
consecrated, or set apart by the Father, to atone for the 
sins of the world, but He was never purified from sin 
through sanctification of the Spirit, because He never 
sinned. They who urge believers to seek the baptism 
of the Spirit for service, as Jesus received it, are doing 
a good service to the Church; but they who proclaim 
this baptism for entire sanctification first and then as 
a full equipment for effective labor act more wisely, 
because the natural and scriptural order is cleansing 
before filling. 

The liberalists make a similar mistake when they sum 
up the whole duty of man in imitating the example of 


TWO RECEPTIONS OF THE SPIRIT. 


159 


Jesus. The example of Christ does not include the sin¬ 
ner’s first and second duty, repentance of sin and seek¬ 
ing and finding forgiveness and the new birth. A re¬ 
generated soul’s first need is inward entire purification, 
then strength for service. 

A sinner’s first need is newness of life imparted by 
the Holy Spirit, the Lord of life, before he can walk in 
the footsteps of Christ. In the plan of salvation there 
is a divine order which must be followed in order to 
attain the best results. In this order purity normally 
precedes power. This proposition implies that purity 
is not power. Jesus was perfectly pure and sinless 
during the thirty years preceding His baptism, but 
there was no miracle, no astonishing wisdom revealed 
to the people of Nazareth. He was known only as a 
blameless young man and a good carpenter. But 
when filled with the Spirit, “Many hearing him were 
astonished, saying, Whence hath this man these things ? 
What is the wisdom that is given unto this man ? and 
what mean such mighty works wrought by his hands ?” 

If even Jesus needed “the power of the Spirit,” and 
did not enter on His work till He received it, surely 
every Christian needs the same power to do the public 
or private work to which he is called. But let him follow 
the divine order for its attainment: life before service, 
and purity before power. We do not deny that there 
are cases of effective service without newness of life, and 
the gift of power in the absence of purity. But these 
are abnormal cases foretold by Christ in Matt. vii. 22, 23, 
“ Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in thy name ? and in 
thy name cast out devils ? and in thy name do many 
wonderful works ? Then will I say unto them, I never 
knew you ; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” 


6 o 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


THE PARACLETE’S “ECCE HOMO” IN THE BELIEVER. 
DER this novel caption the reader is apprised 



that we will not discuss the supreme folly and 


wickedness of Herod’s act of political expedi¬ 
ency when he presented the Son of God to His enemies 
to be crucified. Nor are we about to criticise Guido’s 
immortal painting of the thorn-crowned head of the 
Man of Sorrows. Nor have we taken up our pen to 
review that anonymous book which appeared thirty 
years ago, so fresh and original in style as to arouse 
the interest of two continents, yet so theologically in¬ 
definite that evangelical writers condemned it as ration¬ 
alistic, and rationalists condemned it as evangelical. 
The title which we have chosen for this chapter implies 
that it is the office of the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ 
to the believer. We are not now purposing to dwell 
upon His office of inspiration by which He gave to the 
whole world an accurate history of the life and works 
of Jesus and a reliable record of His words. This ex¬ 
ceedingly important function of the promised Com¬ 
forter we pass by in order to amplify upon another 
function of the Spirit which needs special emphasis 
because it is more apt to be overlooked and forgotten 
— the inward revelation of Christ in the consciousness 
of the adult believer, as distinguished from that infantile 


THE PARACLETE’S “ECCE HOMO.” l6l 

faith by which a penitent is born into the kingdom of 
God. Uncertainty and doubt perplex and weaken im¬ 
mature Christians. Christ is to them an outside and 
distant person whom they endeavor with painful effort 
to bring near and to make real. They try to do the 
orthodox thing, to cherish certain beliefs about Him. 
But there is no warmth, no inspiration, no enthusiasm, 
no intense love. Their experience is much of the time 
dreary, and their Christian service is mechanical and 
constrained, not free, spontaneous and joyful. What 
is lacking? Not the new birth, but a definite experi¬ 
ence which follows regeneration. The new birth im¬ 
plants love divine. When this love has been tested 
and strengthened by obedience it is our privilege by 
faith to have a spiritual manifestation of Christ in our 
hearts. “ He that hath my commandments and keep- 
eth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth 
me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and 
will manifest myself unto him .” In every generation 
since the day of Pentecost there have been witnesses to 
the fulfilment of this promise. They were never more 
numerous than they are to-day in all Christian lands 
and in all evangelical churches. They testify to a 
wonderful clearness of spiritual vision. Truth takes on 
reality and solidity. The eyes of the heart have been 
anointed as the recent application of the X-rays to 
fluorescent spectacles gives to the bodily eyes an amaz¬ 
ing power of penetration called the fluorescent bath. 
Jesus is no longer a distant abstraction, but a person 
vividly near and real, the one altogether lovely. Love 
to Him now becomes intense, passionate and all-con- 


162 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

suming. His commands are now delightful, and they 
are unhesitatingly obeyed. “ When it pleased God,” 
says Paul, “ who called me by his grace, to reveal his 
Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen 
[treated as dogs by the Jews] ; immediately I conferred 
not with flesh and blood.” There in Damascus the 
scales of Jewish prejudice fell off from his eyes, and the 
Spirit gave them a fluorescent bath by which he could 
see Jesus, not now in the clouds above, but in his heart 
an abiding guest. This explains his heroic career of 
labors, dangers and sufferings cheerfully undergone in 
attestation of the truth of Christianity. 

“ We are often where the Ephesians were when they 
said, ‘ We have not so much as heard whether there 
be any Holy Ghost.’ What came to them and saved 
them was the Holy Ghost. What must come to us and 
save us is the same Holy Spirit. There they were hold¬ 
ing certain truths about God and Jesus, holding them 
drearily and coldly, with no life and no spirit in their 
faith. God the Holy Spirit came into them, and then 
their old belief opened into a different belief; then they 
really believed. Can any day in man’s life compare 
with that day? If it were to break forth into flames 
of fire and tremble with sudden and mysterious wind, 
would it seem strange to him—the day when he first 
knew how near God was, and how true truth was, and 
how deep Christ was? Have we known that day? 

“ The Holy Spirit not only gives clearness to truth, 
but gives delight and enthusiastic impulse to duty. 
The work of the Spirit was to make Jesus vividly real 
to man. What He did for any poor Ephesian man or 


THE PARACLETE’S “ECCE HOMO.” • 163 

woman who was toiling away in obedience to the law 
of Christianity was to make Christ real to the toiling 
soul behind and in the law. I find a Christian who has 
really received the Holy Ghost, and what is it that 
strikes and delights me in him? It is the intense and 
intimate reality of Christ. Christ is evidently to him 
the dearest person in the universe. He talks to Christ. 
He dreads to offend Christ. He delights to please 
Christ. His whole life is light and elastic with this 
buoyant desire of doing everything for Jesus, just as 
Jesus would wish it done. Duty has been transfigured. 
The weariness, the drudgery, the whole task nature 
have been taken away. Love has poured like a new 
lifeblood along the dry veins, and the soul that used to 
toil and groan and struggle goes now singing along its 
way, ‘ The life that I live in the flesh I live by the 
faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave him¬ 
self for me.’ ” (Phillips Brooks.) 


164 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CONSCIENCE. 

P ROF. WHEWELL, in his “Moral Philosophy, 1 ” 
asserts that every human volition expressive of 
a choice has a moral character which would be 
perceived by our moral sense were it sufficiently keen. 
This is a declaration that there are no acts morally 
indifferent, styled by the Greeks adiaphora , such as the 
choice of the color of a necktie, the length of an over¬ 
coat, or the kind of food I may order for my dinner at 
a restaurant. Most of us are so morally obtuse as to 
see no ethical quality in these choices, and are dis¬ 
posed to call him morbid and impracticable who finds 
moral obligations in the selection of shbestrings. But 
we may be doing injustice to those rare consciences 
which have attained a more subtile moral discrimination 
than the multitude who laugh at scruples which they 
cannot appreciate. For it is possible that culture may 
impart such an insight into the tendencies of apparent 
trifles as to discern a disastrous moral outcome in the 
long run. 

Examples of this moral sagacity are found in those 
who first denounce the skating-rink, the baseball team 
and the students’ regatta. If all had been as sharp- 
sighted as the few, there would not have been so many 
bitter experiences. If there were an intuitive recogni- 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CONSCIENCE. 165 

tion of poison under all its disguises, nobody but fools 
would ever touch it. On many subjects there is no 
such delicate moral intuition in immature and uncul¬ 
tured minds. What safeguard, then, have such per¬ 
sons? Must they all then drink poison in order to 
find out its deadliness? No. Let the discerning warn 
the unwary, let the old caution the young, and experi¬ 
ence counsel inexperience. Then those who believe 
may be kept from downfall, for a good moral char¬ 
acter is conditioned on faith just as certainly as eternal 
salvation hinges on a persevering trust in Christ. In 
the sphere of morals this is the best that can be done 
for those who have not their external “ senses exercised 
to discern both good and evil.” But in the spiritual 
sphere into which all true believers have been trans¬ 
lated, where there are realities too high for the in¬ 
tellect to reach and questions too subtile for so coarse 
an instrument as conscience to answer, God has pro¬ 
vided another umpire perfectly competent for the 
guidance of the Christian. “Let the peace of Christ 
arbitrate in your hearts ” (Col. iii. 15, Revised Version, 
margin). “Wherever,” says Bishop Lightfoot, Eng¬ 
land’s greatest Pauline expositor, “there is a conflict 
of motives or impulses or reasons, the peace of Christ 
must step in and decide which is to prevail.” This 
new arbiter is not peace with Christ, or reconciliation, 
but a far superior and subsequent experience, “ the 
peace of Christ,” the unfathomable ocean of His peace 
poured by the Holy Spirit into your soul in all the 
fulness of His incoming and abiding. This peace 
becomes the paramount consideration where there is 


166 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

an internal conflict Everything which disturbs this 
profound rest of soul will be instinctively avoided, and 
every act that weaves the thinnest veil between you and 
the face of the adorable Son of God you will instantly 
shrink from. Thus believers who claim their entire 
heritage in Christ have an infallible arbiter in a sphere 
far above that of conscience. St. Paul intended some¬ 
thing peculiar by the use of the Greek word for 
“arbitrate,” found nowhere else in the Holy Scriptures, 
styled by Bengel “ a remarkable word.” 

Modern science constructs balances so delicately 
poised as to be turned by the weight of a fraction 
of a hair. The Christian may so far realize the higher 
possibilities of grace as to be even better equipped 
for testing human volitions. Let me illustrate. I am 
invited to be initiated into a popular secret order. 
Conscience does not object, but the peace of Christ 
does. A social club-house is erected in my town, and 
I am solicited to join. Conscience discerns no evil 
there, but the peace of Christ declines to enter where 
Christ Himself cannot be introduced and be assigned 
the seat of honor. The question of worldly amuse¬ 
ments has for centuries been before the court of con¬ 
science, and no final decision has been reached. But 
it is quickly decided by the arbiter which the gospel 
has called to the judgment seat, ‘'‘the peace of Christ.” 
All truly spiritual minds all along down the Christian 
ages present a consensus of opinion on the deadening 
spiritual effect of the dance, the card-table and the 
theatre. Because this consensus has been formulated 
into a rule of life for the benefit of inexperience, a 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CONSCIENCE. 


167 


great outcry has recently been made by some who 
seem to have forgotten that Christian character consists 
in something more than good morals, and that its 
essential principle is spiritual life imparted by the Holy 
Ghost and sustained by converse with the skies. What 
all truly spiritual minds have found detrimental to the 
life of Christ in the soul should be avoided by all who 
aspire to dwell on what Joseph Cook has recently 
called “ spiritual uplands.” There are two classes of 
Christians. One class asks, “Is this amusement or 
indulgence forbidden? If it is not, I will embrace it.” 
The other asks, “Is it obstructive of cloudless com¬ 
munion with the Father and the Son through the Para¬ 
clete? If it is, I will discard it.” The one aims at 
innocence, the other at spirituality. The party of 
higher aim, even though it should be in the minority in 
any church, should prevail. Their standard should 
become universal. Thus will the unity of the body of 
Christ be promoted, as is implied in the words of St. 
Paul: “ Let the peace of Christ arbitrate in your hearts, 
to the which also ye were called in one body.” 

Paul asserts his love for the Hebrew nation, his 
“ kinsmen according to the flesh,” declaring that his 
conscience was “ bearing him witness in the Holy 
Ghost.” This strong asseveration implies an intimate 
relation between the Spirit and conscience. We may 
not be able to give a full and accurate statement of this 
relation. Among the self-evident truths with which the 
human mind is originally furnished is the distinction be¬ 
tween right and wrong. The power to discover this 
distinction inheres in every sane mind. On questions 


68 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


relating to immutable morality all such minds agree in 
their decisions. Such questions are few, and theoretical 
rather than practical. They are not modified by circum¬ 
stances. They are such as these: Is it right to hate a 
benefactor? Is it right to punish the innocent? Is it 
right to reward the guilty? Is it right to intend injus¬ 
tice to a fellow man ? Is it right to violate my own 
sense of right? to dishonor a parent? to commit adul¬ 
tery? There can be but one answer to these questions. 
They are addressed to the intuitive sense of right and 
not to the understanding or practical judgment which 
modifies the decision. But when we ask the question, 
Is this accused man worthy of punishment? we have 
now to exercise our judgment and go through a, course 
of reasoning before we can decide, and two perfectly 
conscientious persons may disagree in their verdict, be¬ 
cause we are now in the region of mutable morality. 
Most of the moral questions in daily life are of this 
character. It is not enough to know that one man has 
killed another. I must take into account the circum¬ 
stances, whether it was in self-defence when attacked by 
a robber, or a burglar by night was shot in the act of 
breaking into the dwelling. This sufficiently illustrates 
mutable morality. 

I can but think that the philosophy of Lotze and others 
is true, that all the self-evident truths are in the last 
analysis the activity of the immanent God in the human 
spirit. Hence the moral intuitions, immutable and in¬ 
variable, are the voice of the divine Spirit immanent in 
all men, irrespective of regeneration and the gracious 
indwelling of the Spirit. There is a sense in which the 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CONSCIENCE. 169 

Spirit of God is upholding nature. Men are not con¬ 
scious of this immanent substratum of their being. But 
when the Holy Spirit, as a gracious gift, is bestowed upon 
the believer, he is conscious of His presence within as 
was Paul. The effect is manifest not so much in the 
increase of the power of moral discrimination, though 
it does clarify the moral perceptions, as in the marvel¬ 
lous addition to the power that impels toward righteous¬ 
ness. For the conscience has a threefold power—dis¬ 
crimination, impulse toward the right, and, after the act, 
approval or disapproval, according as the act is right 
or wrong. The gracious work of the Holy Spirit inten¬ 
sifies each of these functions, the second more mani¬ 
festly than the first, and the third more than the second. 

What effect does the fulness of the Spirit have in the 
decisions of practical questions in the province of muta¬ 
ble morality? We answer, it does not prevent errors 
in judgment and fallacies in logic. The Holy Spirit 
renders no one infallible in such matters. Yet He in¬ 
directly helps us by delivering us from the dominance 
of appetites and passions inimical to clearness of intel¬ 
lect and calmness of judgment. By inspiring in our 
hearts love to our neighbor as to ourselves, He strongly 
incites us to do perfect justice to him in our decision of 
questions involving his rights. Still the best of men 
and women who love God with all their hearts, and 
their neighbors as themselves, may go astray in judg¬ 
ment without a loss of love. Hence, in applying their 
intellects to the construction of systems of theology, 
some have founded Calvinism with its five points, un¬ 
conditional election, a limited atonement, irresistible 


170 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

grace, bound will, and the final perseverance of the 
saints; and others equally devout and scholarly have 
constructed Arminianism with its universal atonement 
conditionally applied, the free will, entire sanctification 
possible before death, and the peril of a total apostasy 
from the highest state of grace. George Whitefield 
preached the first of these doctrines and John Wesley 
the last. Both were filled with the Spirit and were 
burning as bright candles of the Lord. Both were used 
by the Spirit to preach the saving truths of the gospel 
in such a way as to save multitudes of souls. 

We do not teach that error is as good as truth in the 
production of holy character. We believe that in both 
the doctrines named there is saving truth because Christ 
is at the centre of both as the object of faith; and sal¬ 
vation consists in a vital union with Him and not in 
opinions about Him. The maintenance of a good con¬ 
science toward God from day to day is essential to the 
life of faith. The believer must aim at, must be satis¬ 
fied with, nothing less than this. It is within his reach. 
Even the Old Testament saints had the witness that they 
pleased God. By a good conscience we mean an unac¬ 
cusing conscience, not the assurance that we are ex¬ 
empt from errors in practice arising from misjudgments, 
but the consciousness that our intentions and aims are 
unselfish and holy. True spirituality cannot exist un¬ 
less accompanied by scrupulous conscientiousness, the 
purpose to do right at any cost. If believers live as 
they should, they will find as the Christian life pro¬ 
gresses, the testimony of conscience and the voice of 
the Holy Spirit becoming identical. As we have before 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CONSCIENCE. 171 

intimated, the conscience is the activity of the Spirit of 
God, on the plane of nature, as Creator and Preserver. 
In regeneration and sanctification the Spirit works on 
the plane of grace, as the Reconstructer aiming to re¬ 
store what sin had defiled. 

It is interesting and instructive to note the relation 
of the Holy Spirit to conscience in the work of regener¬ 
ation and sanctification. If man was created to be a 
temple of God, his spirit must be the holy of holies in 
which He dwells, and his conscience must be the ark of 
the covenant which carries His law. Sin defiled that 
sacred ark and rendered it offensive to the holy God. 
The scheme of redemption must have direct reference 
to the purification of the conscience. The writer to the 
Hebrews intimates that Mosaism “ did not make him 
that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the con¬ 
science ” (ix. 9), and he exhorts the believer to “draw 
near, having his heart sprinkled from an evil [guilty] 
conscience ” (x. 22). The conscience, relieved of 
guilt through faith in the atonement made by Christ, 
and ever after prompting to a life of obedience, is 
the spiritual organ in which the Holy Spirit evermore 
dwells, keeping watchful guard over the living law in 
the heart and constantly witnessing to the persever¬ 
ing believer that he is a child of God. Peace, the 
fruit of the Spirit, can dwell only with a “ conscience 
void of offence.” Holiness, the work of the Spirit, is 
also attested by conscience. “ For our glorying is this, 
the testimony of our conscience that in holiness we be¬ 
haved ourselves,” etc. (II Corinthians i. 12, Revised 
Version). 


172 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


This is the place to set up safety guards against the 
danger of a fanatical conscience, which is sometimes 
associated with extreme and erroneous views respecting 
the guidance of the Spirit. We lay down the following 
principles: 

1. The Holy Spirit dwelling in the heart does not 
supersede the activity of our own reason, judgment 
and moral sense in the decision of practical questions. 

2. While the Holy Spirit’s testimony to the fact of 
adoption, including pardon, is direct and infallible when 
corroborated by the fruit of the Spirit, His guidance in 
the conduct of life is not designed to be sole and infalli¬ 
ble, but in connection with the inspired Word, our own 
common sense, divine Providences and the godly judg¬ 
ment of Christian people. 

3. No guidance is of the Holy Spirit which collides 
with the Bible inspired by the Spirit. In such collision 
the Holy Scriptures must be followed in preference to 
the supposed leading of the Spirit. 

4. The Holy Spirit, so named because it is His 
office to create and conserve holiness, never leads into 
sin, nor to doctrines which belittle sin by denying its 
exceeding sinfulness and its desert of eternal punish¬ 
ment, or by weakening the motives to repentance. 

5. It being the office of the Spirit to glorify 
Christ, no teaching that disparages His divinity as the 
only Saviour can come from the Spirit. 

6. It being the work of the Spirit to regenerate and 
to sanctify, the declaration of any substitute for the 
new birth and holiness cannot be approved by the 
Spirit of truth, much less can it be inspired by Him. 


THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CONSCIENCE. 


173 


7. In practical matters, the province of mutable 
morality, where fallible intellectual processes are in¬ 
volved and erroneous conclusions are possible, it is a 
species of fanaticism to ascribe such conclusion to the 
Holy Spirit. 

8. There are two classes of people with whom pas¬ 
tors of churches have difficulty. The first consists of 
those who consider conscience as infallible beyond the 
sphere of motives, dispositions and principles, and in¬ 
sist on infallibility in all practical questions, the realm 
of mutable ethics. They demand that the decisions of 
the intellect in respect to all moral subjects should be 
regarded as always right and clothed with the authority 
of intuitive judgments. Just here is found a fruitful 
source of most dangerous self-deception and of fanati¬ 
cism in its various forms and degrees. 

The second class includes those who make an analo¬ 
gous mistake in respect to the Holy Spirit. They in¬ 
sist that His infallibility, evinced in His direct witness 
to adoption, be carried into all questions of every-day 
life, questions involving intellectual research and the 
practical reason. 

These erroneous claims respecting conscience and 
the Holy Spirit put these two classes beyond the reach 
of argument, persuasion and advice. If members of 
the church, they inevitably become dictatorial, censori¬ 
ous and schismatic. 


74 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XX. 


THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. 



HE apostle Paul beseeches the Ephesian church 


X to be diligent, to be constantly keeping that 
essential unity which the personal Holy Spirit 
originates in the true Church of Christ. The element 
or principle in which this oneness is maintained is 
peace, “ the bond of peace.” The exhortation to dili¬ 
gence implies that in keeping this unity human agency 
must be vigorously applied. Why cannot the Holy 
Spirit alone continue that unity of which He is the sole 
author? We answer, that where there is an obedient 
will He could preserve that concord which He has 
produced, if it were the province of the divine Spirit 
to assimilate intellects as well as hearts. Grace does 
not harmonize divergent reasons and conflicting judg¬ 
ments. We are to think and let think, and accept the 
honest conclusion within the limits of Christian ortho¬ 
doxy. We must within this sphere agree to disagree, 
as did John Wesley and George Whitefield on the five 
points of Calvinism, while still loving each other. The 
hearts of Barnabas and Paul were united while a prac¬ 
tical question on which they differed made it expedient 
for them to labor for a season in different fields. The 
diligent endeavor which Paul urges the Ephesians to 
make is to be directed against magnifying differences of 


THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. 


75 


opinion on minor questions into causes of heart aliena¬ 
tion. It requires constant effort to keep this threefold 
maxim : 

“In non-essentials liberty; 

In essentials unity; 

In all things charity.” 

The various sects which divide the Christian world 
can keep the unity of the Spirit and dwell in peace so 
long as they are filled with true charity. How can this 
fulness be insured? Can we originate Christian love? 
Can we love at will? No. But having in the divine 
promises a sufficient ground for faith in Jesus Christ, 
we may ask for the presence of the Comforter in our 
hearts, whose office it is “to shed abroad the love of 
God,” which is always attended by love to all who bear 
His natural image, and especially to all who bear His 
moral image restored by the new birth. Here is the 
real basis of Christian unity. It is spiritual and not 
ecclesiastical; not theological beyond the basal truths 
of orthodoxy; not sacramental and ceremonial. The 
manner and significance of water baptism, the Lord’s 
Supper and the number and gradation of ordinations 
should be regarded as in the sphere of liberty. Is God 
revealed in His divine Son, Jesus Christ, the only Sav¬ 
iour, and does He communicate Himself to believers 
in the personal Holy Spirit, the only Sanctifier? This 
is a doctrinal basis sufficient for the unity of all Chris¬ 
tians. It is not possible to dwell in Christian unity with 
those who deny these fundamentals. They do not 
dwell in the same sphere with us, since they disclaim 
belief in the offices of the personal Holy Spirit and 


176 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


disbelieve in the Godhead of Jesus Christ, through 
whom we receive the Paraclete, who implants regener¬ 
ating love and perfects Sanctifying love, the element of 
Christian unity. Yet we should, without regard to re¬ 
ligious belief, co-operate with all good citizens to abate 
and abolish evils which prey upon society, to enlighten 
the ignorant, to lift up the fallen and to remove snares 
from the feet of the tempted. While we believe that 
society can be most effectively regenerated by regen¬ 
erating the individual, we should, while applying the 
truth to secure this end, cherish and express a lively 
sympathy with all who, though they “ follow not us,” 
are trying to cast out devils in the name of Jesus re¬ 
garded as a mere religious teacher and reformer. They 
are, so far as the moral well-being of society is con¬ 
cerned, our allies in the great battle with the hosts of 
the evil one, though they are fighting with bows and 
arrows when they might be firing Remington rifles. 
But it must be borne in mind that Christian unity, as 
Dean Alford well says, “ is conditioned and limited by 
the truth; and is not to be extended to those who 
are enemies and impugners of the truth;” who reject 
the real Christ and preach a phantom Jesus, and whose 
morals are as corrupt as their faith is false. To have 
fellowship with such a man is “ to be a partaker of his 
evil deeds” (II John ix. 11). 

It is alleged by some that the fulness of the Holy 
Spirit received by faith in Christ’s Pentecostal promise 
does not unite, but rather divides local churches. This 
is not true where the entire membership receive their 
full heritage. The members of such churches are 


THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. 


177 


welded together in the closest possible unity, such as 
extorted admiration even from persecutors. “ Behold 
how these Christians love one another.” Such a church 
is indeed a spiritual brotherhood. 

“ One with our brethren here in love, 

And one with saints that are at rest. 

And one with angel hosts above, 

And one with God forever blest.” 

But where part of a church are only nominal Christians, 
baptized worldlings, who either never knew the Lord 
Jesus as their Saviour or have fallen from grace, there 
arises a division, caused not by the Holy Ghost, but by 
those professors who resist Him in His work of purifi¬ 
cation. This is what Christ Himself predicted. The 
founder of Christianity, in putting down the kingdom of 
Satan whose works He came to destroy, brought dis¬ 
turbance and division to every family, every synagogue, 
every city and every social organization, a part of 
whose members rejected Him while a part received 
Him as both Saviour and Lord. Real living Chris¬ 
tianity is always a disturber of worldliness and sin, 
bringing a sword on the earth. 

It is the mission of the Paraclete to reprove the 
world of sin, and if the world has been received into 
the Church it must be convicted of sin wherever it is 
found. Otherwise the Spirit would be unfaithful to 
His mission. He did not come down from heaven to 
promote discord, but peace on the basis of truth and 
purity. The resisting party desires peace by being let 
alone in sin. On whom should the blame rest? Who 
is responsible for the division and contention? Cer- 


178 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

tainly not those who receive the message which is 
promotive of the object for which the Church was 
founded. This is to help its members to become 
Christlike. Those who reject this office of the Spirit 
to conform believers to the image of the Son of God 
are the disturbers of the unity and peace of the Church, 
and not those who live in harmony with the purpose of 
its founder. It often is true that a part of a church, 
frequently a small minority, have the scriptural ideal 
of what constitutes true prosperity and real strength, 
namely, a firm grip upon God’s promises and the pres¬ 
ence in the church of the converting and sanctifying 
power from week to week; a zeal for the salvation of 
souls however poor and submerged in vice; a willing¬ 
ness to give for the support of the gospel from love to 
its author; and an abhorrence of worldly devices for 
raising money by appealing to selfishness, to appetite, 
to frivolity and doubtful amusements. Christ is dis¬ 
honored when His gospel is treated as not worthy of 
support for its own sake. The Holy Spirit is grieved 
when various sensual lures and baits, often in their 
character repugnant to the spirit and purpose of Chris¬ 
tianity, are employed to support the gospel of Christ. 
When the spiritual few lift- up their voice, protesting 
against yoking the world and the Church to draw the 
car of the gospel, instead of cheerful though self- 
denying gifts, the majority often are disposed to un¬ 
favorable criticism of their conscientious and spiritual 
brethren, creating a chasm between the members. In 
such a case, which is not imaginary, the Holy Spirit is 
not the cause of the division, but rather the absence of 


THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. 


179 


the Holy Spirit from the hearts of a part of the church 
creates the schism in the body of Christ, the visible 
Church. The cure is a universal baptism of the Spirit. 
There are other occasions for dissensions threatening 
the unity of the Church. One of these is partialities 
and preferences for preachers, one running to hear 
logical Paul and another desiring to listen to rhe¬ 
torical Apollos, and still another admiring the earnest 
and impulsive Cephas. The remedy is to turn the 
thoughts away from the heralds of salvation to the 
divine personage who is dwelling in the temple of each 
believing heart. This was Paul’s remedy for the strifes 
and divisions in Corinth. “ Know ye not that ye are 
temples of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in 
you? ” (I Cor. iii. 16). When the Church knows experi¬ 
mentally the indwelling Paraclete, dissensions cease and 
unity is insured. 

Above the mists there are altitudes of Christian ex¬ 
perience where believers see eye to eye. Intellectual dif¬ 
ferences which once stood between them like impassable 
mountains now seem to their downward gaze like mole¬ 
hills. It is possible to dwell amid the Alpine sublimi¬ 
ties of truth so long as to drop our small measuring 
rods and to acquire larger ones commensurate with the 
grandeurs about us. It is the office of the Holy Spirit 
to lift aspiring believers to such Pisgah heights as Paul 
was familiar with when he prayed that the Ephesians 
“ might be strong to apprehend with all the saints what 
is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to 
know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, 
that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God,” 


i8o 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Wherever this prayer is answered there will be Chris¬ 
tian unity. 

k ‘ Plunged in the Godhead’s deepest sea, 

And lost in its immensity.” 

Trifles will not unhinge and divide a company of such 
believers. 

In His high-priestly prayer (John xvii.) Jesus prays 
for His disciples, “That they all may be one; as thou, 
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be 
one in us; I in them, and thou in me, that they may 
be made perfect in one.” There are two kinds of 
church unity — mechanical like the staves of a barrel 
held together by the external pressure of hoops; and 
vital, like the roots, trunk and branches of a tree uni¬ 
fied by the mysterious inward force which we call life. 
For which of these did Jesus pray? We find our an¬ 
swer in these words which He had just uttered, “ I am 
the true vine” (John xv. i). He prayed for vital 
unity, the only oneness worth praying for. This is 
infinitely superior to that illusory thing after which 
many are striving, a church unity through an exterior 
governmental uniformity. Partisan unity is a good ma¬ 
chine for developing political power, but it cannot be 
used by the great unifier, the Giver and Lord of life, 
the Holy Spirit. It is He who unites all regenerate 
souls to Christ, and hence to one another, by His crea¬ 
tive and vitalizing touch, drawing all into a marvellous 
oneness, “ a oneness spiritually organic, in which each 
personality, while quite exempt from invasion, falls 
under the power of a divine cohesion whose results in 
spiritual harmony of life and action will develop for- 


THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. l8l 

ever.” (Moule.) The invisible church is always one 
body, of which the risen Christ is the Head. It would 
be a pleasant thing to have the invisible exactly com¬ 
mensurate with the visible containing all the members 
of the invisible church and no others. But under the 
present dispensation this can never be, because the 
doorkeeper of the invisible is the heart-knowing Spirit, 
and the doorkeepers of the visible Church are fallible 
men. This is hinted at very strongly by Christ in the 
parable of the tares and the wheat growing together 
until the harvest. He evidently had in mind the visi¬ 
ble Church, also, when He compared the kingdom of 
heaven to “ a drag-net that was cast into the sea, and 
gathered of every kind; . . . and they gathered the 
good into vessels,, but the bad they cast away” (Matt, 
xiii. 47). Such an instrument the Holy Spirit does 
not use. He takes the fish individually one by one; 
and no sorting is required. There is no discount of His 
results. 

There can. be no substitute for the Spirit in produc¬ 
ing that unity which will endure all the changes and ad¬ 
versities of life, which will gain the approval of God as 
realizing His ideal of the Church, and which will sav¬ 
ingly influence the world in answer to Christ’s prayer 
for the oneness of all His disciples, “ that the world may 
believe that thou hast sent me.” This was the power 
which conquered the unbelief of the persecutors of the 
primitive Church. “ Behold how these Christians love 
one another! ” This love did not arise from similar 
intellectual tastes, nor from assent to the same creed, 
but from the indwelling in their hearts of the same 


182 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Holy Spirit inciting to mutual love. When love de¬ 
clines through a relaxation of faith and the uprising of 
selfishness because of the withdrawal of the Spirit from 
His conscious indwelling, divisions, parties, cliques and 
sects arise. When we walk along the shore of the sea 
we observe pools here and there with their inhabitants 
separated from each other by rocks and stretches of 
sand, preventing communication between them. This 
is because the tide is out. But when it again rises and 
floods the beach the separate pools are swallowed up in 
the one great ocean. When the Spirit pours floods 
upon the dry grounds, self is submerged and Christian 
unity is restored. 

The maxim of Protestantism of the low-church, 
non-ritualistic type is this, “ Where the Spirit is, there 
is the Church.” The maxim of the Papist and sacra- 
mentarian is, “Where the Church is, there is the Spirit.” 
In the first case the Spirit creates the Church; in the 
other the Church professedly insures the presence of 
the Spirit. But He dwells only in hearts, not in sacra¬ 
ments or in organizations. Hence no organization, 
however apostolic its history and successive in its ordi¬ 
nations, can secure the Holy Spirit. The unity of the 
Church, the real apostolic succession, is through the 
Lord and Giver of life, the Holy Spirit. Paul exhorts 
believers “ earnestly to strive to maintain the unity of 
the Spirit [the oneness which He brings about] in [or 
within] the bond of peace,” i. e. } the bond by which peace 
is conserved, which is love. As Christ came to estab¬ 
lish peace on earth, so the Holy Ghost, “ another Com¬ 
forter,” came to execute Christ’s purpose, not by treat- 


THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. 183 

ies formed by diplomatists, but by “ shedding abroad 
the love of God ” in the hearts of men. Says Chrysos¬ 
tom, “ The Spirit unites those who are widely sundered 
by nationality and different manners.” We see this veri¬ 
fied as the result of modern missions, by which the Holy 
Spirit is putting the girdle of peace around our globe. 

“We profess to desire earnestly the outpouring of 
the Holy Spirit, but we shall do well to note that one 
of the first things which the Holy Spirit will aim to pro¬ 
duce in us will be this Christlike love to the brethren. 
How many brethren in Christ are now effectually sep¬ 
arated from you by a high wall of social position, a 
wall of conventionality that has been reared by Chris¬ 
tian pride? Were Christ’s mysterious and unfathom¬ 
able love to them to find its way, perchance, into your 
heart, how would it laugh at the huge hindrance of this 
wall, and by a breath cause it to dissolve into the am¬ 
bient air! This is no hypothesis. In lands where the 
Spirit of God is poured out we are told of the sudden 
and beautiful flowing together of social streams that 
have flowed separately on for generations. Love like 
that which Jesus manifested to the Samaritan woman 
and to the woman who was a sinner, has now found new 
exhibitions of itself.” (G. Bowen.) 


184 


. THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

ENLARGEMENT OF HEART BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

I T was the Psalmist who, according to the Septuagint 
version, testifies: “I ran the way of thy command¬ 
ments when thou didst enlarge my heart.” In his 
early spiritual life there was in this Old Testament saint 
the same straitness, slowness and lack of momentum 
which characterize young Christians in modern times. 
His service had been enforced by the law and its 
penalties. Duty was a word which had not been 
written over and almost concealed by the super¬ 
imposed capitals which spell Love. But it seems there 
was a crisis in his religious life where constraint ends 
and joyous liberty begins; where irksomeness disap¬ 
pears and spontaneity in service is a permanent char¬ 
acteristic. The crisis which separates these two expe¬ 
riences is the enlargement of the heart. This is a figure 
for what St. John calls “ perfect love,” and which 
St. Paul elsewhere describes as “ the love of God shed 
abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost,” though he 
once, at least, employs the Old Testament phrase: “ O 
ye Corinthians, my mouth is opened unto you, my heart 
is enlarged.” Reverse the order of these clauses, and we 
have the cause and the effect. A full heart makes an 
unloosed tongue. The inquiry is all-important, When 
is this crisis reached? Some say: “Never this side the 


ENLARGEMENT OF HEART. 


I8 5 


dying bed.” But no Scripture proof of this dismal doc¬ 
trine is ever given. It is not true that the believing soul 
must be a partly filled goblet till it is overflowed by the 
waters of the river of death. Others say: All souls at 
the new birth are deluged with love to the brim, a love 
that drives their chariot wheels as swiftly as the myste¬ 
rious electric current drives our street-cars up and down 
our tri-mountain city. Such a steady motive power is 
not the experience of multitudes, yea, the vast majori¬ 
ties who are truly regenerate. Their inertia is great and 
the impelling power is feeble. Indeed, something worse 
than inertia is to be overcome; a strong opposition often 
arises within, which it takes all their strength to over¬ 
come. They have not a heart at leisure from itself to 
concentrate upon the work' of God. True it is that a 
few Christians, like John Fletcher, very soon after their 
birth into the kingdom, because of a correct apprehen¬ 
sion of their privilege in the dispensation of the Spirit, 
are deluged with divine love and become giants in faith. 
The mass of believers are mere babes in spiritual devel¬ 
opment. They see days of great weakness and are often 
on the verge of surrender to the foe. Some, alas, throw 
away their arms and run away from the fight and never 
renew the battle. Others fight all their lives with foes 
in their own hearts and never overcome and cast them 
out. They have been told by their preachers that this 
war in the members is the normal Christian life. Hence, 
believing their preachers instead of the Word of God, 
they limit His power by their unbelief, and never gladly 
run, but always sadly drag themselves along the heavenly 
way. This large class of Christians need enlightenment 


1 86 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

and encouragement, and not denunciation. They need 
to dwell in thought upon “ the exceeding great and pre¬ 
cious promises,” that they may have an experience of the 
“exceeding greatness of God’s power to usward who 
believe.” They need to lock arms with St. Paul and 
walk through his glorious epistles, and get his large view 
of the extent of Christ’s saving power, since He has sent 
down the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier. They should study 
the new Greek words which Paul coined to express the 
fulness of divine grace and the wealth of privilege 
which are the heritage of those who fully believe; 
such as that translated by “more than conquerer” 
(Rom. viii. 37); “much more abound” (Rom. v. 20, 
II Cor. vii. 4) ; “ and the grace of our Lord abounded 
exceedingly with faith and love” (I Tim. i. 14). Es¬ 
pecially should they ponder that declaration of God’s 
ability to save, found in II Cor. ix. 8, in which are two 
“ abounds ” and five “ alls ” — “ God is able to make all 
grace abound towards you; that ye, always having all 
sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good 
work.” They should daily repeat St. Paul’s prayer for 
the Ephesians, emphasizing each petition, especially the 
ascription at the close, “ Now unto him that is able to 
do exceeding abundantly [.superabundantly above the 
greatest abundance , A. Clarke] above all that we ask 
or think, according to the power that worketh in us” 
(Eph. iii. 20). There is not sufficient familiarity with 
the promises on the part of professed Christians. 
While unbelievers neglect the threatenings, believers 
are prone to neglect the promises of the Holy Scrip¬ 
tures. Again, the growing failure to magnify the Holy 


ENLARGEMENT OF HEART. 


18/ 


Spirit results in constraint and the legal spirit, instead 
of the freedom of the evangelical spirit, inspiring cour¬ 
age to run through troops of foes. How many so- 
called evangelical Christians there are whose creed is 
practically as defective as was that of the first believers 
in Ephesus: “We have not so much as heard whether 
there be any Holy Ghost” as receivable into the heart. 

This important item dropped out of a Christian’s 
faith palsies his tongue, paralyzes his hands and en¬ 
feebles his feet. If he is a preacher, his- message will 
be delivered in the weakness of uncertainty and doubt. 
Splendid rhetoric and oratorical tones and attitudes 
are beggarly substitutes for the unction of the Holy 
Ghost. The anointed pulpit will always be mighty. 
The Spirit inspires fearlessness, imparts freedom of 
utterance, enkindles zeal and unconquerable love of 
souls. All of these are elements of genuine eloquence. 
They furnish the man, the subject and the occasion. 

The formal prayer meeting would be transformed by 
the enlargement of the heart. Dumbness, the penalty 
of unbelief (Luke i. 20), will find a ready and glad 
utterance, and the dry harangue will be replaced by the 
hallelujah. 

Let the heart of Protestantism be enlarged by the 
fulness of the Comforter, and rivers of salvation would 
flow out unto the ends of the earth, vitalizing those 
organizations which He can use, and sweeping away 
those which have been devised as substitutes for His 
regenerating and sanctifying power. 

How intimate is the connection between efficiency 
and success in saving souls and the fulness of the Spirit, 


188 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


may be seen in the study ot the lives of those among 
the laity and the ministry who have instrumentally 
turned many to righteousness* It is an open secret 
that their suasive power dated from the hour when 
their hearts were enlarged by the baptism of the Holy 
Ghost. From this experience in the city of New York, 
in answer to the prayers of a few consecrated women, 
Dwight L. Moody dates the beginning of his highest 
efficiency as an evangelist. This made Mrs. Catharine 
Booth’s preaching so pungent in convicting of sin 
among the middle and upper classes in the West End 
of London; while by the same mighty power as a con¬ 
scious experience, her husband, Gen. Booth, was con¬ 
quering the slums in the East End of that city of nearly 
five millions of souls. Dr. Finney, after the Spirit 
anointed him, was like an electric dynamo from which 
streams of power went forth whenever he stood up to 
preac'h, and sometimes from his speechless presence. 
Benjamin Abbott, converted late in life, so extremely 
illiterate that he preached on the “ oyster man,” mis¬ 
reading “ austere man,” preached in New Jersey, Penn¬ 
sylvania and Maryland under the anointing of the 
Spirit with so great success that thousands were added 
to the Lord. A layman by the name of Carpenter was 
comparatively a cipher in the Presbyterian church un¬ 
til he was filled with the Holy Ghost, when he became, 
through personal effort, the most successful winner of 
souls in his generation. He drew men to Christ to the 
number of several thousands as estimated at his funeral. 
These are a few instances out of myriads in which the 
baptism of the Spirit has given all the qualities requi- 


ENLARGEMENT OF HEART. 189 

site for moving souls from sin unto Christ, love, self- 
sacrifice, persistence, faith, fearlessness, tenderness and 
sympathy. We should have mentioned joyfulness as 
an element of great power in drawing sinners to salva¬ 
tion. Joy always attends the fulness of the Holy Spirit. 
It differs from all other kinds of happiness which arise 
from a pleasant environment and depend on things 
external and hence changeable and transient. The joy 
of the Holy Ghost is internal, abiding and eternal. The 
joy of men and women pelted with brickbats and rotten 
eggs, taking joyfully the spoiling of their goods, has a 
strange power to convince the persecutors of the truth 
of the gospel, on the principle that “ the blood of the 
martyrs is the s.eed of the Church.” 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


190 


CHAPTER XXII. 

KNOWING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

I N what sense may believers know the Comforter? 
Jesus, who sends Him, assured His disciples that 
they should know Him because of His intimate re¬ 
lation to them, dwelling with them and ultimately being 
in them. The indwelling would be true after His future 
coming. If we fulfil the condition, which is love to 
Christ certified by obedience, we shall receive the Com¬ 
forter and shall know Him. Of course* we shall know 
when we receive so important a person. It will be a 
crisis marking a new era in our lives. It is evident that 
this is not inferential knowledge, though this is impor¬ 
tant as a confirmation. It comes from noting the fruits- 
of the Spirit described in the Bible and comparing them 
with the Christian graces observed in ourselves, love, 
joy, peace, etc. Knowledge of God in the scriptural 
sense is assimilative. No man can truthfully say that 
he knows the Comforter when these fruits of the Spirit 
are absent. But knowledge of a person includes more 
than an acquaintance with his works. I had known the 
military career of Gen. Grant, and had read his brief 
despatches after his battles, but I had no personal 
acquaintance with that great soldier till one day in 
June, 1865, he- permitted me to be presented to him 
and to shake hands with him on the veranda of a Sara- 


KNOWING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 191 

toga hotel. T then for the first time knew Ulysses S. 
Grant. 

In like manner we may have such a second-hand knowl¬ 
edge of the Paraclete as we find in the Holy Scriptures 
and in the testimony of persons filled with the Spirit, 
while strangers to the personal Holy Spirit. It is one 
thing to know much about Him; it is quite a different 
thing to have an intuitive perception of Him, and to 
feel the thrilling and transforming touch of His hand, 
and to commune with Him by day and by night more 
intimately than with any earthly friend. This is the 
kind of knowledge invoked in the so-called apostolic 
benediction. We do not understand that in our knowl¬ 
edge of the Holy Spirit we differentiate Him from the 
Father and the Son, though some eminent Christians 
testify to an acquaintance with each Person of the 
adorable Trinity, one in substance, but three in sub¬ 
sistences. If such a knowledge has been given to any 
believers, it is quite exceptional. It may be universal 
in the future world; it is certainly very rare in this. 
In our present state it is enough for us to receive the 
love of God and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
commingled in one blissful stream descending through 
the channel of the Holy Ghost. A distinctive knowl¬ 
edge of each person would tend to divide the divine 
substance and to lead to tritheism, three Gods. 

In the scheme of revelation the Father revealed Him¬ 
self in His incarnate Son. After His visible form was 
received by the cloud which hid Him from the eyes of 
His gazing disciples on the day of His ascension, the 
Paraclete was sent down to testify of the absent God- 


92 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Man, to keep Him in the world’s thought and to glorify 
Him who came to glorify the Father. Hence the Para¬ 
clete glorifies both the Father and the Son when He 
glorifies the Son. Hence Paul’s prayer for the Ephe¬ 
sian church, “That the Father would give them the 
Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of 
him.” This and other texts show that it is not the 
mission of the Comforter to give prominence to Himself, 
but to Christ, to whom He bears witness. Thus “ when 
a messenger comes to tell a king, when a witness gives 
a testimony for his friend, neither speaks of himself. 
And yet, without doing so, both the messenger and 
the witness, in the very fact of giving their evidence, 
draw our attention to themselves, and claim our recog¬ 
nition of their presence and trustworthiness. And just 
so the Holy Spirit, when He testifies of Christ and 
glorifies Him, must be known and acknowledged in 
His divine commission and presence.” (Andrew Mur¬ 
ray.) It is in this sense that we are to have a knowl¬ 
edge of the Paraclete while He holds up the light for us 
to see the Father in His adorable Son. 

The apostles knew nothing of an unconscious in¬ 
coming and indwelling of the personal Paraclete. Un¬ 
conscious regeneration in water-baptism and uncon¬ 
scious reception of the Holy Spirit through a bishop’s 
hands in confirmation are doctrines lacking Biblical 
proof, the only proof possible after the exclusion of 
consciousness. The philosophy of the mind seems to 
require that the introduction of another personality to 
me, a person, must be with my assured knowledge. 
If a human person enters my library and addresses me 


KNOWING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


193 


while writing these words, I know it. Shall I not know 
it if a divine person knocks at the door of my heart 
and, at my invitation, enters? Will not His personal 
presence be self-evidencing? Will not His testimony 
to my adoption prove that He is a Person because He 
has faculties responsive to my own? If He takes up 
his abode in me, and converses with me and inspires 
love in me to Him and the other Persons whom He 
represents, shall I not be conscious of His personal 
presence? Love is a spiritual energy which goes forth 
only toward persons, never toward things. We admire 
pictures and statuary, but we love persons only. “ It 
is because the presence of the Spirit as the indwelling 
teacher in every believer is so little known and recog¬ 
nized in the Church; and because, as the result of this, 
the workings of the Spirit are greatly limited, that there 
is so much difficulty and doubt, so much fear and hes¬ 
itation about the recognition of the virtues of the 
Spirit.” (Andrew Murray.) This spiritual incertitude, 
these hazy Christian experiences and weakening and 
distressing doubts in respect to fundamentals—the 
truth of Christ and personal salvation through Him — 
are the natural product of nebulous preaching on the 
subject of the offices of the Holy Spirit. This defec¬ 
tive preaching comes from a negative experience of the 
fulness of the Spirit. Conversions take the type of 
doctrines. The Wesleys, after a long and painful 
search, received the direct witness of the Spirit to the 
forgiveness of sins. They immediately began to preach 
this doctrine, strange to that era of spiritual death, 
though shining in the New Testament as clearly as the 


194 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


midday sun. People were converted by thousands, of 
whom John Wesley testified that ninety-nine out of every 
hundred could tell the exact time of their saving accept¬ 
ance of Christ. This is not the ratio of clear-cut con¬ 
versions with a date among modern Methodists, because 
the offices of the Holy Spirit are not now so promi¬ 
nently and constantly held up before the people in the 
ministrations of the pulpit. What is the remedy? Let 
the pulpit be baptized with the Holy Ghost. Let 
preacher and layman who desire to know the promised 
Paraclete and to realize His indwelling, study the teach¬ 
ing of the Bible on this theme, especially the promises 
in the fourth Gospel. Gather these promises together 
and study them earnestly, and then turn to the Pente¬ 
costal fulfilment in the Acts, and to the full develop¬ 
ment and application of this doctrine by the apostolic 
writers, especially John and Paul. Approach these 
epistles athirst to find the artesian well of “ waters 
springing up unto everlasting life,” and to drink ever¬ 
more therefrom. Study prayerfully and with faith all 
that the Spirit of inspiration has put on record respect¬ 
ing Himself and His indwelling and blessed work in 
your heart. Study in dependence on the Spirit, who 
alone can unlock the Word that He has inspired. Study 
with a will ready to follow whither the Spirit may lead, 
and with a complete self-surrender to God and that per¬ 
fect self-effacement which Paul describes as a double 
crucifixion, “ the world has been crucified unto me, and 
I unto the world ” (Gal. vi. 14). Consecration is indis¬ 
pensable to the successful study of this high theme. It 
clarifies the intellect, dispels prejudices and misconcep- 


KNOWING THE HOLY. SPIRIT. 


195 


tions, and unifies and strengthens all the faculties. In 
this attitude of hearty consent to the leading of the 
Spirit, obedience to Christ and crucifixion of the flesh, 
the persevering believer will soon find the Spirit work¬ 
ing in him, first as a search-light revealing impurities 
and mixed motives never discovered before. Then, if 
the will consents to their removal, the Spirit will en¬ 
tirely cleanse the temple of the heart and permanently 
fill it with His glorious presence. He will beautify His 
sanctuary with the entire galaxy of Christian virtues. 
He will strengthen its walls and make them impregnable 
to all assaults from without, and He will insure loyalty 
within by His constant indwelling “ who yearneth for us 
even jealously ” (James iv. 5, Revised Version, margin). 
We must remember that in both the natural and the 
spiritual world knowledge is preceded by faith. We 
must believe the Holy Ghost before we can know Him. 
Every altitude of higher knowledge must be the result 
of a stronger trust. Faith must be the habit of the 
soul that aspires after constant growth. Faith ever has 
to do with the invisible and the seemingly unreal. The 
Paraclete is unseen to the natural eye, and the inner 
eye of reason does not recognize His existence. Hence 
faith is the only door for the Spirit to enter and the 
only atmosphere in which He can dwell. There is no 
way of knowing the Holy Spirit but by possessing Him 
and being possessed by Him, just as there is no way of 
knowing life but by living. In fact the Holy Spirit is 
the life of the believing human spirit. The spiritual life 
is as real to consciousness as the natural life. 

The declaration of Christ is, “Ye know him, for he 


196 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


abideth with you, and shall be in you.” We see no form. 
We hear no sound. We feel the touch of no hand. 
The Spirit does not address any one of the five senses 
when He creates the soul anew. Spiritual things are 
spiritually discerned by minds quickened into spiritual 
life by the omnipotent Spirit, the giver of life. In 
regeneration the Spirit is inscrutable, His act of new 
creation is to the subject a fact, a something done in 
an unfathomable depth below his consciousness. This 
fact is recognized only by its effects. He knows that 
he is a new man, that he is fundamentally changed in 
all his tendencies, that he is released from his accusing 
conscience, that his past sins are forgiven and that he 
is no longer cowering beneath the wrath of God, but 
basking in the sunshine of His love. He no longer 
thinks of Him as a police judge sentencing him to a 
deserved punishment, but as a loving Father. The filial 
feeling has been suddenly and mysteriously inspired in 
his bosom, and he hears with his spiritual ear new words 
sounding in his heart, “Abba, Father.” Almost invol¬ 
untarily he utters them with' his lips. He is conscious of 
a spiritual transformation. The personal agent he does 
not perceive. In fact the personality of your most 
intimate friend you have never directly seen. Person¬ 
ality is spiritual and is recognized only by its effects — 
words, smiles and other actions. You may therefore 
know the Holy Spirit’s personality by His works in your 
own consciousness, as certainly as a son may know his 
father with whom he has daily intercourse. We say this 
to show that spiritual knowledge has the same certitude 
as our knowledge of men and things around us. 


KNOWING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


97 


“ It happens sometimes that the indwelling of Christ 
and God and His Spirit signalizes itself with such an en¬ 
ergy in the believer that the human individual life is over¬ 
flowed and swallowed up by the divine as a river of de¬ 
light. ... In other cases it is certified that the walk of 
the Christian is in heaven actually (Phil. iii. 20, compare 
Zech. iii. 7), by the fact that the future glory is not 
merely revealed to his perception as a subject of hope 
(I Cor. ii. 9, 10), but is given him for a moment to see 
and share in by way of foretaste.”* This is a state of 
ecstasy, the highest experience of heavenly blessed¬ 
ness and of a knowledge of the mysteries of the king¬ 
dom of heaven. The recipe for the attainment of this 
knowledge is found in Matt. v. 8, Luke x. 22. 

Some may be inclined to ask another question, How 
do we recognize the Holy Spirit? How do we know 
that it is He and not some lying spirit who is speaking 
to us? The how of all knowledge is mysterious. The 
philosophers are not agreed in the method of our knowl¬ 
edge of the external world. Some assert that we know 
only our own sensations and ideas, and therefore we are 
not sure that there is a material world external to our 
minds. These idealists are inclined to apply the same 
reasoning to Christian experience and to insist that it is 
all subjective in its origin, that there is no God in it, that 
all the changes supposed to be wrought by a divine 
person outside of us, regenerating, forgiving, witnessing, 
sanctifying and indwelling, are from hidden causes in our 
own minds. This kind of reasoning would deny the 
existence of any human personality outside of ourselves, 


*Delitzsch’s “ Biblical Psychology,” pages 418, 419. 


198 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


as well as any material existence. It would reduce all 
phenomena to our own consciousness and ourselves to a 
string of sensations. All these absurdities must follow 
the admission that all our religious experiences are only 
varying states of our own thoughts and feelings with no 
external cause. Such a conclusion we are not prepared 
to accept. When the morning light dispels the dark¬ 
ness, I know that the sun has arisen, and I do not need 
a candle to see him rise. So when amid the gloom of 
condemnation for my sins, while trusting in Jesus Christ, 
a light suddenly shoots into my mind and a voice within 
cries “Abba, Father,” and the feeling of dread is suddenly 
changed to filial love toward God, I know that a divine 
messenger is announcing forgiveness of my sins. This 
divine sunrise is self-evidencing. I need no rush-light 
of human philosophy or testimony to certify it. What 
has taken place is that my dead soul has been made 
alive. This life has quickened my dormant power of 
spiritual perception, so that I know by unerring intui¬ 
tion the presence of God the Holy Spirit. “To know 
the Spirit,” says Murray, “ is the divine foundation of 
certainty.” Christian experience rests upon the same 
basis with mathematics and all philosophy—“self- 
evident truth, the activity of the immanent God in the 
human soul.” (Joseph Cook.) 

But we are not left without some light upon the ques¬ 
tion how we know the Holy Comforter. John says, 
“ Ye know him, for he shall be in you,” or as the 
Revised Version, “ He is in you,” the future being by 
prolepsis spoken of as present, as Alford thinks. The 
abiding indwelling of the Spirit is assumed to be in the 
consciousness of the believer. 


KNOWING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


199 


He who knows the Holy Spirit will always have the 
Spirit’s fruit as a confirmation of His inmost indwelling. 
But the knowledge is not the result of the fruit, but its 
cause. He must know in order to have love, joy, peace, 
etc. He knows directly by intuition, and not inferen- 
tially. Hence he needs not to be told by some ex¬ 
perienced Christian, “ This is the Holy Ghost.” He 
needs no such introduction. The Spirit of truth brings 
His own credentials with Him, which even the most 
illiterate can read. He may not be able to tell the dis¬ 
tinctive marks by which the voice of the Spirit is dis¬ 
tinguished from the suggestions of his own heart, but 
he instinctively feels them. 

He recognizes the Spirit of God as a solid and eter¬ 
nal reality, while the world with its glitter of gold, and 
rank, its style, pomp and power, is a brilliant but yan- 
ishing vapor. Hence he is ready, if he must choose 
between grieving the Spirit and the loss of all earthly 
good, to go to a martyr’s death at the stake or block 
with shouts of joy. If you think I am theorizing, read 
Ulhorn’s “ Conflict of Christianity with Paganism” and 
Fox’s “ Book of Martyrs.” 

He who knows the Spirit quickly recognizes the 
stranger who has the same knowledge, when all the rest 
of mankind fail to discern the invisible seal of God in 
his forehead. 

He does not look at the denominational badge. He 
is free from any overweening partiality to some par¬ 
ticular earmark when the name of Jesus is on the 
sheep, for the Spirit of God dwells in all real saints. 

“ Names and sects and parties fall; 

Thou, O Christ, art all in all,” 


200 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


The explanation of this fact is that the Paraclete is 
the bond of union, the Spirit of life, connecting each 
believer with all others by uniting them with our risen 
Lord. We have in our modern times telephones, which 
so transmit speech as to bind up into a social union 
and possible daily converse millions of people separated 
by hundreds and even thousands of miles. This is pos¬ 
sible only by having all the wires meet at a common 
centre. This centre of Christian union and communion 
through the Holy Ghost is our glorified and adorable 
Lord Jesus. The agency of electricity in the social 
union of mankind is a faint reflection of the agency of 
the Holy Spirit in the spiritual union of Christians. 
The wonders of science on the plane of nature are of 
small account when compared with the wonders of the 
Spirit on the plane of the supernatural. 

That the Paraclete may be received unconsciously is 
a corollary of the doctrine that He may be imparted by 
the hands of a bishop apostolically ordained. There is 
room for great error in the idea that the Holy Spirit is 
given in the rite of confirmation while the supposed re¬ 
cipient is in utter ignorance of this important event. 
For neither do the lips nor the lives of a majority of 
persons confirmed attest any real reception of the Sanc¬ 
tifier. It is in keeping with that baptismal regeneration 
which produces no change in the consciousness, con¬ 
duct or character. The Holy Spirit received and not 
known may withdraw and not be missed. That recep¬ 
tion of the Spirit of adoption uttering not the cry 
“Abba, Father,” and certifying His incoming only by 
what Phillips Brooks styles the myth of apostolic sue- 


KNOWING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


201 


cession, must be a delusion and a snare founded on the 
false maxim, Ubi ecclesia , ibi Spiritus, Where the Church 
is, there is the Spirit; instead of the converse based on 
the Holy Scriptures and common sense, Ubi Spiritus , 
ibi ecclesia , Where the Spirit is, there is the Church. 
Archbishop Whately intimates that he whose hope of 
final salvation rests on his ability to prove the apostolic 
validity of the sacraments has a painfully dubious pros¬ 
pect of inheriting eternal life. 


202 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE FREEDOM OF THE SPIRIT. 


W HERE the Spirit of the Lord is, there is lib¬ 
erty.” The words “freedom” and “liberty” 
are found in the New Testament, but they 
do not have the meaning which is attached to them 
in treatises on the Will. It is a remarkable fact 
that there is no attempt in the Bible to prove human 
free agency, as there is no demonstration of the exist¬ 
ence of God. Both of these fundamental truths are 
assumed without proof. Moral obligation implies free¬ 
dom, and consciousness asserts it. This kind of free- 
dom has been called formal freedom, to distinguish it 
from that real freedom which Christ promises: “If 
the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” 
Since this freedom is the gift of Christ, it is evident 
that it is not an attribute of man in his fallen estate. 
It belongs only to the true believers in the S< 3 n of God. 
It is not a deliverance from any bolts or bars or yoke 
of necessity outside of us, but from “ the law in our 
members,” in the will itself, a uniform tendency to 
yield to the sway of the depraved sensibilities which 
give birth to sin. When conscience forbids what incli¬ 
nation strongly desires and evil habit draws us to, there 
is a collision of forces which, without the intervention 
of Christ, the great Liberator, invariably ends in bond- 


THE FREEDOM OF THE SPIRIT. 


203 


age. “ O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver 
me?” This is the universal cry with all thoughtful 
souls recognizing obligation to the moral law but with¬ 
out help from above to keep it. 

“ They see the right, and they approve it too; 

Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.” 

This produces a degrading sense of servility. One 
bright moral ideal after another fades away. After 
each moral defeat the aspirant after true excellence lets 
down his standard with a self-loathing and wretchedness 
befitting one who has voluntarily sold himself into slav¬ 
ery. Thus thousands of noble souls who began to 
climb the mountain with the motto “ Excelsior,” have 
begun to descend, having insensibly changed their 
motto to “ Inferior.” 

There is only one remedy. Some power must enter 
into them which can harmonize inclination and con¬ 
science in such a manner as to enable the man to do 
just what he delights to do and at the same time to do 
exactly right. When desire and duty become one, the 
soul is truly free and truly happy. How is this iden¬ 
tity of duty and desire accomplished? The Stoics en¬ 
deavored to reach the same end by extinguishing the 
latter, but they failed. God does not lead men up to 
perfect freedom by mutilation, but by purification. 
When we desire only God’s will, we will delight in His 
law. There are minds which cannot be subject to 
God’s law. Still they are accountable. They can con¬ 
sent to the reconstruction of their natures by the ex¬ 
tinction of carnality and the renewing of the Holy 
Ghost. They are, through Jesus Christ, endowed with 


204 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


the gracious ability to repent and to receive Him as 
their Saviour and Lord. This is initial salvation, or 
prevenient grace. It is for the will to determine 
whether this shall become real and complete deliver¬ 
ance from the enslavement of depravity. One would 
suppose that this is the only choice morally possible to 
a rational being, since all men abhor personal slavery 
and political bondage. But we need not go far to find 
abundant proofs that the so-called “ natural man ” pre¬ 
fers the despotism of sin to the freedom of righteous¬ 
ness. There is no more hopeless condition than de¬ 
light in spiritual bondage. In a former generation the 
saddest parents in America were those who, after con¬ 
verting all their possessions into gold to ransom their 
sailor boy from captivity in Algeria, received back their 
money from the consul with a message that their son 
refused to be redeemed because he preferred the soci¬ 
ety of his barbarian captors to that of his Christian 
kindred. He had married a Bedouin wife, contracted 
nomadic habits, and become fascinated with the pleas¬ 
ures of the lawless Arabs. This is a mirror in which 
every impenitent sinner may see himself. He is re¬ 
deemed by One who has paid an infinite ransom; yet 
for the evanescent and degrading pleasures of an hour 
he scorns freedom and hugs his chains. .He persists 
in this through all his earthly probation. What would 
the liberalist do with such a being if he were in supreme 
authority over him? The question is a fair one. Let 
there be a candid answer. We have hinted at the way 
of obtaining spiritual freedom. It is only through the 
power of Christ, the great Emancipator. Our part is 


THE FREEDOM OF THE SPIRIT. 


205 


an all-surrendering trust in Him. Says Thomas ^ 
Kempis: “ My son, thou canst not have perfect liberty 
unless thou wholly renounce thyself. They are but in 
fetters, all who merely seek their own interest and are 
lovers of themselves. - Keep this short and complete say¬ 
ing: ‘Forsake all, and thou shalt find all. Leave con¬ 
cupiscence, and thou shalt find rest.’ ” This gives God 
a chance to do some very needful work inside, even to 
put His law in the heart. When this is done, the law, 
instead of a yoke galling the neck, becomes a well- 
spring of joy. “ Thy statutes,” says the Psalmist, 
“ have been my songs ” — the Ten Commandments set 
to music ! Only those whose hearts are perfected in 
love shed abroad by the Holy Spirit can ever learn that 
tune. It is the first rehearsal on the earth of the new 
song they are singing in heaven, the song of Moses 
and the Lamb, the law and the gospel harmonized. 

Hitherto we have spoken of the negative side of 
spiritual freedom. There is a positive side. The love 
of God filling the soul and excluding all antagonisms, 
guarantees the unfettered action of the higher nature, 
restores the man to himself, and makes him his own 
master, because God has now perfect sway over his 
will. This is the gospel paradox — rest under a yoke ; 
Christ’s doulos (slave) and the Lord’s freeman. The 
free are exhorted to use their liberty as the bondser¬ 
vants of God. This is because the highest freedom is 
realized when the heart is perfectly captivated by the 
divine love and the will is completely enthralled by the 
divine will. Faber seems to have experienced this 
paradox which prompted his hymn to the divine will: 


20 6 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


“ And He hath breathed into my heart 
A special love for thee ; 

A love to lose my will in His, 

And by that loss be free.” 

But what are we to understand by being free from 
the law? In answering this question some have fallen 
into the error of antinomianism, the denial of obliga¬ 
tion on the part of the believer to keep the moral law. 

I. He is not under the law as the ground of justifi¬ 
cation, the blood of Christ being his new plea; nor as 
the motive to service, love to the Lawgiver having 
taken its place; but he is under the law as the rule of 
life,, although Christianity puts man’s spontaneous obe¬ 
dience in the place of the act legally enforced, his in¬ 
dependent decision in lieu of legal necessity. Thus 
love unconsciously fulfils the law. It implants the 
principle of obedience in the heart so that it is free, 
unconstrained and natural. This is “ the law of lib¬ 
erty” of which St. James speaks. I do not wonder 
that he calls it the “ royal law,” i. e ., the king of all 
laws. For he whom the love of Christ constrains in all 
his acts obeys the highest law in the universe. This is 
Christian perfection. This is being free indeed. This 
is the heritage of all believers. Reader, if you have 
not received this heritage, the reason is not found in 
the unwillingness of the executor of Christ’s last will 
and testament, the Holy Spirit, to hand over your por¬ 
tion. You have not fulfilled the conditions of its re¬ 
ception. 

We come now to consider spiritual freedom as re¬ 
lated to the moral law, and to anchor a buoy over the 
hidden rock of antinomianism. 


THE FREEDOM OF THE SPIRIT. 


20 7 


The Jews did not make a distinction, as we do, be¬ 
tween the ceremonial, the civil and the moral precepts 
of the law, but thought that all should be honored by 
obedience with the same pious regard. As with devout 
Romanists in our times, the neglect of a mere ceremo¬ 
nial requirement was in heinousness equal to the in¬ 
fraction of a command of the decalogue. It is this use 
of a term embracing such diverse meanings that makes 
the intelligent reading of the New Testament difficult. 
It is the purpose of this section to relieve this difficulty 
as far as possible. It may not be known to many stu¬ 
dents of this volume that twelve of its books—nearly 
one half — do not contain the ambiguous word law. 
These are II Corinthians, Colossians, I and II Thessalo- 
nians, II Timothy, I and II Peter, Jude, I, II and III John 
and Revelation. This is encouraging to those who have 
sweat in their endeavor to understand St. Paul and har¬ 
monize him with James. It may help the reader of the 
Greek Testament to know that when James uses the word 
law without the article he designates only the ethical 
portions of the Mosaic law. It will be of advantage to 
all Bible students to bear in mind the fact that in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews the ceremonial part of the law is 
the prominent idea. It should also be noted that in 
the other books this term is so often referred to as to 
show that the writer or speaker has his eye on the 
ethical part alone as of perpetual obligation, the cere¬ 
monial and civil precepts being no longer binding on 
Christians. It is ethical where it is spoken of as ful¬ 
filled by love, as in Rom. xiii. 8, io, Gal. v. 14; also 
where its perpetual validity is declared, as in Matt. v. 


208 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


18; and also in cases where it is equivalent to the prin¬ 
ciples of right imbedded in the human conscience, as 
in Rom. ii. 14, 15. St. Paul uses “law” in a peculiar 
sense as a uniform tendency or dominant impulse. 
The moral law when used as a sword piercing the con¬ 
science is the occasion of an opposition so strong that 
the apostle calls it “ another law in my members, war¬ 
ring against the law of my mind.” Here we have the 
bent to sin inherent in human nature in conflict with 
the rule of action prescribed by reason, Rom. vii. 23. 
On the battlefield of this chapter grace does not appear, 
nor is the Holy Spirit one of the combatants. In chap¬ 
ter viii. 2 He does appear as a conqueror, under the 
Pauline phrase, “ the law of the Spirit of life,” the im¬ 
pulse to right action imparted by the Spirit when He 
breathed life into the dead soul. 

But we apprehend that most Bible readers are in 
perplexity respecting the declaration that believers are 
“ not under the law ” and are “ free from the law.” Is 
St. Paul referring to the moral law? Yes, to the 
whole law. Then how can a man be righteous irre¬ 
spective of law? Does not righteousness imply a 
standard of right to which the individual conforms? 
Yes, every true believer enthrones the law of God in 
his heart and swears eternal allegiance thereto. When 
St. Paul says that I am “ not under the law,” I am 
“ free from the law,” he does not mean that I am re¬ 
moved from the realm of moral law, for it is so im¬ 
bedded in my mind that its removal would destroy me 
by blasting the image of God in me. Hence God’s law 
cannot be abrogated in the sense that I need not obey 


THE FREEDOM OF THE SPIRIT. 


209 


it, but it is abrogated in the sense that it is, through 
faith in Christ, no longer the ground of justification. 
Were I shut up to justification only through the plea 
that I have never transgressed the law of God, I should 
be in utter despair, for I have violated my own sense 
of right and can never be justified by the works of the 
law. Against this plea “ every mouth is stopped, and 
all the world is become guilty before God.” But thanks 
be to God through Jesus Christ, a new ground of justi¬ 
fication is presented. If by faith I plant my feet on 
this ground, and instead of insisting that I have never 
sinned, I say, I have sinned, but Thou, O Son of God, 
hast died for me, I will find not legal acquittal but 
gracious pardon. In this sense I am free from the law. 
But it is still my rule of life. Grace enables me to 
obey it in the future so that I may be free from con¬ 
demnation. 

2. There is another sense in which the believer is free 
from the law. He is delivered from the fear of the 
penalty of the law as a motive to service. Love to the 
Lawgiver has taken the place of tormenting dread, so 
that the believer is no longer servile in his obedience, 
but free and joyful. Duty, that unscriptural word, is 
now no longer on the lips or in the thoughts. It is 
concealed by the word love written over it in large 
letters. If disquieting fear of the law still vexes the 
soul in any degree, however slight, it is because love has 
not yet been made perfect in kind by the exclusion of 
every antagonist. This is St. John’s explanation. 

3. This brings us to a third sense in which we are free 
from the law — as the instrument of entire sanctification. 


210 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


The law has no power to slay our inward foes, to cleanse 
from depraved tendency. We cannot sanctify our¬ 
selves by the most vigorous application of the law. It 
is not the province of the law to cure the depravity 
which it reveals. This is the office of the Holy Spirit, 
so called because it is His prerogative conditionally to 
create and to conserve holiness. It is my opinion that 
no mistake is more common among Christians than the 
idea of sanctification by the works of the law. For men 
may be as legal in seeking freedom from depravity as 
they are in seeking deliverance from guilt. This idea 
lies at the root of gradualism, or the denial of the ex¬ 
tinction of the propensity to sin by the Spirit’s finishing 
stroke. Only those believe in the instantaneous ex¬ 
tinction of inbred sin who magnify the office of the per¬ 
sonal Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier. “Then will I sprinkle 
clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all 
your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse 
you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new 
spirit will I put within you.” “ This promise,” says 
Henry, the incisive commentator, “ signifies both the 
blood of Christ sprinkled upon the conscience to purify 
that and to take away the sense of guilt, and the grace 
of the Spirit sprinkled on the whole soul to purify it 
from all corrupt inclinations and dispositions, as Naaman 
was cleansed from his leprosy by dipping in Jordan.” 
Henry interprets this promise as inclusive of both justi¬ 
fication and entire sanctification, or the extinction of 
sin considered as a principle infecting our nature. Thus 
impersonal law is not abolished, but is transcended, in 
both justification and sanctification, by the personal 
Holy Spirit,' the Lord of life and author of purity. 


TESTINGS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


21 I 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

TESTINGS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


T HE great condition on which the Paraclete is given 
to any believer is love to Christ evinced by obe¬ 
dience. He may think that he loves Christ and 
be sadly mistaken. His Christ may be a false Christ, 
a figment of his own imagination, a liberalistic Christ 
who will save all men on their own terms, or a fragmen¬ 
tary Christ with justice and all the sterner qualities 
omitted. There is many a nominal, but only one real 
and saving Christ. Hence tests are required to prove 
whether we are really obedient to the true Christ, 
whether, in the words of John Wesley, “ naked we 
are willing to follow a naked Saviour.” This means 
whether at the loss of all things — property, friends and 
reputation — we will follow a pauper Christ with no 
hope of any reward this side of the resurrection of the 
just, and possibly a chance for martyrdom. Will we 
sell all to buy the pearl of great price? Essentially 
this test is required of all: “ Will you hold all else as 
cheap, yea, worthless, in comparison with Christ?” 
The literal divesting ourselves of all our possessions 
which are necessary to give us a foothold of vantage 
and usefulness may never be required by the Spirit. 
Christ required it of but one person. If he had obeyed 
promptly, I doubt npt that Christ would have taken the 


212 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


will for the deed and would have made him His steward 
to hold and administer the estate in the interest of his 
Master, honoring every draft he should make. 

In the nature of the case there are definite limits within 
which the Spirit applies His tests. He never requires 
us to do wrong, to violate our own sense of right. To 
deny this is to open the door for the worst forms of 
fanaticism and to justify the most flagrant iniquity. It 
will not do to cite the command to Abraham to sacri¬ 
fice his son. He may have deemed it his parental 
right to take the life he had imparted. This instance 
affords no argument against our position, for the whole 
transaction, the command and the interposition, are on 
the plane of the supernatural. Nor does the Spirit re¬ 
quire any one to disobey the code of minor morals, 
good manners. 

It should be noted that tests may be presented by 
Satan when a believing soul is aspiring to receive the 
fulness of the Spirit — tests repulsive and offensive, in 
order to discourage a perfect self-surrender to God. 
At such times a cultivated Christian woman says that 
she is always confronted with the question whether she 
will, uninvited and unauthorized, make public addresses 
for Christ in the waiting-rooms of railroad stations, 
hotel parlors and steamboat saloons. Her sense of 
propriety prompts her to say “ No.” Another well- 
balanced woman is asked, when in the act of consecrat¬ 
ing all to God, whether she is willing to be like some 
slattern who professes to be wholly the Lord’s, and 
deems it a sin to make her toilet before a mirror. 
Her good taste says “ No.” A m^n of a bilious tern- 


TESTINGS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


213 


perament, subject to wasting fevers, is asked, while in 
the act of supreme surrender to Christ, whether he is 
willing to go to the Congo Mission. Knowing his dis¬ 
ability and the adverse opinion of medical experts, and 
not being eager for a martyr’s crown in six months, he 
says “ No.” In all these cases this negative answer is 
used by the tempter to shake the believer’s trust in 
Christ and cheat him of his full heritage. What he 
should do is to put all these questions aside and to 
promise that after receiving the desired blessing he will 
follow his best light derived from the indwelling Spirit, 
the Holy Scriptures, his own God-given common sense, 
his own abilities, his circumstances, providential open¬ 
ings and shuttings, and the godly judgment of the 
church to which he belongs. By thus doing he will 
thwart the adversary and receive the Sanctifier. 

Says F. B. Meyer: “ Expect the Holy Ghost to work 
in, with and for you. When a man is right with God, 
God will freely use him. There will rise up within 
him impulses and inspirations, strong strivings, strange 
resolves. These must be tested by Scripture and 
prayer, and if evidently of God they must be obeyed. 
But there is this perennial source of comfort: God’s 
commands are enablings. He will never give us a 
work to do without showing exactly how and when to 
do it, and He will give the precise strength and wisdom 
we need. Do not dread to enter this life because you 
fear that God will ask you to do something you cannot 
do. He will never do that. If He lays aught on your 
heart, He will do so uninvited; as you pray about it the 
impression will continue to grow, so that presently, as 


214 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


you look up to know what He wills you to say or do, 
the way will suddenly open, and you will probably have 
said the word or done the deed almost unconsciously. 
Rely on the Holy Ghost to go before you to make the 
crooked places straight and the rough places smooth. 
Do not bring the legal spirit of ‘ must ’ into God’s free 
service. ‘ Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.’ 
Let your life be as effortless as theirs, because your faith 
shall constantly hand over all difficulties and responsi¬ 
bilities to your ever-present Lord. There is no effort 
to the branch in putting forth the swelling clusters of 
grapes — the effort would be to keep them back.” 

But we must be discriminating in this matter, and not 
ascribe to the evil spirit tests which are for our benefit 
presented by the good Spirit. Says George Bowen: 
“The Spirit of God sometimes tests the peace of Chris¬ 
tians in this way: A man has been for years enjoying 
a good measure of what he regards as Christian peace. 
Suddenly he is made to see himself by the light of a 
most intense holiness, and his former conceptions of his 
sinfulness and of the evil of all sin are augmented a 
thousandfold. Straightway his peace is gone. His 
faith utterly fails. He finds himself sinking in deep 
waters. The mention of the righteousness of Christ 
fails to satisfy him. The Christ that he has been look¬ 
ing at all along was one that would save from a mod¬ 
erate amount of sin, such as he then knew of in him¬ 
self; he has yet to become acquainted with a Christ 
able and willing to save from such a dire ruin as he is 
now conscious of. His past peace, his past faith, are 
now ascertained to have partaken very largely of the 


TESTINGS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


215 


nature of delusion. Happy for him that he has discov¬ 
ered the inadequacy of his faith while it is yet the day 
of grace ! Sad, unspeakably sad, is the fate of many 
whose faith is not thus tested in their lifetime.” 

The great danger is that Christians will test them¬ 
selves, not by the Holy Scriptures illumined and applied 
by the Holy Spirit, but by the average type of Christian 
character and attainment. This average is usually low, 
and this kind of testing, “measuring themselves by 
themselves,” tends to a still lower standard quite near 
to that vague and indistinct line of demarcation which 
shades off into the world. We cannot believe that God 
is pleased with an average piety. Stalker says that the 
Hebrew prophets addressed nations and were satisfied 
with national obedience, but “ Jesus Christ discovered 
the individual.” Hence He can be satisfied only with 
marked individuality in the development of all the 
graces of the Spirit. 

Let no man deem it profitable to hide from himself 
the evil lurking in his own heart. The peace thus 
secured will not long endure. It is an illusion. No 
one can afford to rest in a treacherous peace. Abso¬ 
lute safety lies in receiving from the Spirit of truth the 
intense light that He sheds upon sin, the disease, and 
upon Christ, the unfailing Physician if called in season. 


216 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


THE HOLY GHOST AND SINGING. 


S INGING is a delightful part of divine worship. 
The only singing that pleases God and melts and 
moves men is inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is 
the spontaneous outflow of spiritual joy. “ Be filled 
with the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and 
hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody 
with your heart unto the Lord.” According to the 
Revised Version the heart is the instrument of accept¬ 
able singing. It is in tune only when at peace with 
God and filled with His Spirit, the blessed Comforter. 
Every hymn which is a true vehicle of praise was com¬ 
posed as the outgush of emotions awakened by the 
Holy Spirit. For as all genuine poetry is the language 
of the natural emotions, so all the great and imperish¬ 
able Christian hymns are the utterances of the spiritual 
sensibilities. 

The great poet of Germany, Goethe, near the close 
of his life, remarked with sadness that none of his 
poems had been deemed worthy of a place in the 
Lutheran hymnal. The Holy Spirit was not in that 
man and hence could not inspire one immortal lyric. 
It is just the same with song-singing as it is with song¬ 
writing. If the Spirit is not in the singer the highest 
effect cannot be reached, For there are no substitutes 


THE HOLY GHOST AND SINGING. 


21 7 


for His presence as the soul of sacred music. Science, 
art, voice culture and faultless instrumental accompa¬ 
niments are all hollow without the indwelling Spirit 
breathing upon he finer chords of the soul. When 
the Spirit leaves a church the singing of the congrega¬ 
tion declines. It becomes spiritless, cold and formal. 
At last “ hallelujahs languish on their tongues, and 
their devotion dies.” They send to the opera for a 
quartet “ to praise God by committee,” or for a solo¬ 
ist to say “ amen ” for them in a poor mimicry of the 
liquid trills and flourishes of a bobolink. A recent 
writer, Dr. A. J. Gordon, insists that this is a case of 
simony, the attempt to buy with money inspired song, 
a gift of the Holy Ghost. There are some very im¬ 
portant things which gold cannot purchase: it cannot 
secure true nuptial bliss, it cannot bribe death, it can¬ 
not buy admittance to heaven, nor can it procure a 
proxy for praising God. 

No modern religious movement magnified the work 
of the Holy Spirit so much as that begun by the Wes¬ 
leys. Their converts were remarkable for their singing. 
Why did their singing draw and disarm even their per¬ 
secutors? Because their hearts throbbed with “joy 
unspeakable and full of glory.” They must sing or 
burst asunder without vent to their gladness. Make a 
man happy and he is sure to sing. If he cannot sing, 
he will learn. If he cannot learn, he will shout, or make 
what seems to him a joyful sound, though it may be a 
discord to others not in sympathy with his joy. The 
Wesleys, brimming with poetry and music, prepared 
suitable hymns and tunes and carefully guided this 


2 I 8 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


devotional exercise. Listen to some of John Wesley’s 
directions : “ Suit the tune to the words. Avoid com¬ 
plex tunes, which it is scarcely possible to sing with 
devotion. Repeating the same words so often, espe¬ 
cially while another repeats different words, shocks com¬ 
mon sense, necessarily brings in dead formality, and has 
no more religion in it than a Lancashire hornpipe. Sing 
no anthems. In every society let them learn to sing. 
Introduce no new tunes till they are perfect in the old. 
Exhort every one to sing — not one in ten only. Sing 
lustily.” 

When this charge was given, solo singing was not 
customary in the churches, and hence is not included 
in Wesley’s condemnation. There is now and then a 
soloist filled with the Holy Ghost, like Mr. Sankey, 
who sings so distinctly and earnestly as to evince that 
he has a message from God. But the great majority 
of them, especially the women, drown the words in 
their pranks and twists of voice, as if they were simply 
trying, like acrobats dancing on the top bar of the 
musical staff, to exhibit their vocal gymnastics, while 
the people, instead of worshipping God, are staring at 
the performer with open-mouthed wonder. Nothing 
more strikingly demonstrates the spiritual decay of 
Methodism than the substitution of the artistic music 
of a few hirelings for the hearty and joyful singing of 
the whole assembly. We are disgusted with the intro¬ 
duction of the misnamed sacred music of a pure and 
classic type, “ which is devouring,” says Tyerman, 
“ the very vitals of Methodistic worship, and no more 
harmonizes with the hymns of the Wesleys than an 
automatic scarecrow with a living, breathing man.” 


THE HOLY GHOST AND SINGING. 


219 


Our only hope is in the revival of preaching under 
the anointing, the pulpit magnifying the Holy Ghost 
and the pews receiving him in Pentecostal fulness and 
expressing their joy in jubilant songs. 

In addition to the Holy Spirit in the heart, the ele¬ 
ments of power in singing are, first, numbers to carry 
the tune so strongly as to override any discords of ill- 
trained voices and to create a tidal wave of feeling to 
lift the entire assembly on its bosom and move them 
heavenward. In the second place, the older the hymn 
and the tune the richer will be the tender associations 
enlivening the emotions. There is something very 
affecting in the thought that our fathers and mothers 
and our ancestors for many generations worshipped 
God in the use of the same words and the same tune. 
In the next place, the tune itself should not be like a jig, 
light and airy, suggestive of shallowness of feeling, 
and the words should be filled with such solemn truths 
as will awaken the feeling of sublimity. It is a marked 
characteristic of our old hymns and tunes, in contrast 
with those of modern composition, that they combine 
these qualities. Grandeur in poetry is wedded to tunes 
having long, swelling sweeps of melody bearing all 
hearts upward and almost blending with the heavenly 
choir around the throne of the Lamb. Again, our older 
musical compositions, being free from a chorus attached 
to every verse, can be sung entire with less weariness 
than attends the constant repetition of the same chorus 
in treadmill style without any advance in the thought. 

The cathedral singing of the Germans is noted for its 

effect in awakening devotional feeling. Says an Amer- 


220 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


ican theological professor: “ I can never forget a 
spectacle that I saw in one of the old churches in 
Nuremberg. The great edifice was crowded, one half 
of the audience at least standing. The sermon had 
been delivered in a fervent manner and had apparently 
much interested the feelings of the audience. Immedi¬ 
ately a powerful and well-toned organ sent its peals 
through all the corners and recesses of the cathedral, 
and in a moment every adult and child in the vast 
throng broke forth in praise to the Redeemer, in one 
of those old hymns, mellowed by time, and which 
breathe not of earth but of heaven. The effect, at 
least upon the stranger, was overpowering. Nothing 
like it ever can be produced by a small choir, however 
scientifically trained. Its performance must be com¬ 
paratively dead, because so modern or so artistic and 
scientific, or because it has been subjected to so many 
mutations that few can join in it if they were permitted 
to do so. Music for a popular audience must be 
simple, and then, especially if a great multitude unite, 
it will often be affecting and sublime.” Dr. Eben Tour- 
jee, the late great American advocate of congregational 
singing, on one occasion in Germany was so over¬ 
powered by the outburst of universal song that he 
could not restrain his emotions, but rushed out of the 
cathedral lest he should disturb the worship by his 
hallelujahs. 

Paul intimates that singing psalms, hymns and spir¬ 
itual songs is the natural expression of the fulness of 
the Spirit. Song is the outlet of joy. The Holy Spirit 
diffuses joy, the highest, purest and most enduring, 


THE HOLV GHOST AND SINGING. 


221 


When the Spirit comes into the heart the tongue of the 
dumb sings. John Wesley emphasized the Holy Spirit 
as consciously receivable. The people believed and 
received, and spontaneously burst out in jubilant song. 
Charles Wesley was moved by the Spirit to furnish 
hymns adapted to this modern Pentecost. All the 
Methodists sang, and sang “ lustily ” too, as they were 
exhorted to do by that great reformer inspired by the 
breath of the Almighty to quicken a dead church and 
“ create a soul beneath the ribs of death.” But when 
the Methodists lost the fulness of the Spirit, 

“ Hosannas languished on their tongues. 

And their devotion died.” 

Then they sent to the opera and hired ungodly min¬ 
strels to praise God for them. It was a long stride 
away from the masses who love to have an active part 
in worship. Congregational singing is a great social 
leveller. The ditch-digger with a rich tenor voice feels 
that he is the peer of the owner of broad acres. The 
poor man with a large family and small wages can share 
in such worship and preserve his self-respect. He is 
attracted to a democratic form of worship. The Holy 
Ghost never narrows the privileges of the common 
people. 

President Lincoln once said, “ We know that God 
loves the common people because He has made a great 
multitude of them.” It is the desire of the Holy Spirit 
to regenerate and sanctify this multitude by drawing 
them to the house of prayer and keeping them there. 
Satan has competitive attractions, his institutions which 
put men on the same level, the saloon, the beer-garden, 


222 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


the Sunday excursion, the bicycle outing, the so-called 
“sacred concert” and the Sunday newspaper. The 
churches which are wise will popularize their worship and 
win back the masses who have been repelled by our artis¬ 
tic, exclusive and costly singing which the Holy Ghost 
has no use for in saving sinners and training them for 
life eternal. He can carry to the heart only that which 
comes from the heart. That singing which is the utter¬ 
ance of Christian truth, first through the glowing heart 
of the poet, and then through the fervid sensibilities of 
the singers, the Holy Spirit can impress on both those 
who hear and those who sing. But when the form in 
which the truth is conveyed attracts attention to itself, 
whether it be the ornate style of the preacher or the 
trills and demisemiquavers of the prima donna, stand¬ 
ing where she ought not, admiration of the human per¬ 
formance diverts the mind from divine worship and the 
Holy Spirit is dishonored. It is a professed adoration 
of God, but a real adoration of man. Over such sing¬ 
ing and preaching the Holy Spirit cannot preside. He 
can use the singing of a godly soloist whose sole aim, 
like that of the preacher, is the impressive utterance of 
saving truth. 

Such a man is Mr. Sankey, the yokefellow of Mr. 
Moody. But much solo singing, especially of women, 
is so performed as to convey no truth to the mind, be¬ 
cause it distinctly enunciates no words to the ear, in 
the effort to mount up to the highest notes possible to 
the human voice and to leap from peak to peak as 
Byron represents the “ live thunder ” reverberating 
amid the summits of the Alps. The hearer has not 


THE HOLY GHOST ANI) SINGING. 


223 


the words before him, nor has the preacher read them 
to the audience. If they are not plainly uttered by the 
songster, they convey no more truth than do the “ do , 
re , mi” of the music-teacher. Such singing done softly 
may soothe while it does not edify. But it is God’s 
purpose not to soothe with sound, but to save with 
truth. The organ prelude may awaken the emotion 
of sublimity in minds responsive to melody, but that 
alone never brought a sinner to God nor helped a be¬ 
liever into his full heritage in Christ. If instruments 
accompany singing, they should merely sustain the tune 
and strengthen the weaker parts, but never drown the 
words in an ocean of sound. Happy is that people 
who can sing well without an instrument. There is no 
music comparable to the human voice. Let it be used 
by as many as possible, even by those who make only 
discords, if there is only a volume of tuneful sound 
sufficient to overcome them. 


224 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

PREACHING IN DEMONSTRATION OF THE SPIRIT. 

I N the salvation of souls and their purification and 
enlargement preaching must always be the most 
important human agency. The only rival is the 
press. This lacks personality, one of the two cardinal 
elements of preaching. The other is truth. Phillips 
Brooks defines preaching as the communication of truth 
through personality. Christian truth embodied in a 
book held in the utmost reverence is not preaching. 
It lacks the vital element of personality. Truth written 
across the arches of the sky in letters of flaming fire 
might inspire sublimity and awe, but it would not attain 
the purpose of preaching. There can be no substitute 
for a personal presence endowed with the gift of speech 
and with the subtle magnetism of an earnest soul fully 
surrendered to the Holy Spirit as an organ of His 
suasive power. “ On the other hand, if men speak to 
other men that which they do not claim for truth; if 
they use their powers of persuasion or entertainment 
to make other men listen to their speculations, or do 
their will, or applaud their cleverness, that is not preach¬ 
ing either. The first lacks personality. The second 
lacks truth.” It must be evangelical truth; not its 
pleasant elements only, such as the love of God and the 
bliss of heaven, but its alarming verities also. The 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


225 


highest style of preaching is the tender yet earnest and 
courageous proclamation of “the whole counsel of God, 
sin, retribution, atonement, repentance, faith, pardon, 
purity, judgment, heaven and hell.” Both of these ele¬ 
ments of successful preaching are brought to perfec¬ 
tion through the indwelling fulness of the Holy Ghost. 
What we call unction, that contagious, indefinable state 
of the speaker’s sensibilities combining deep conviction 
of the truth uttered, strong emotion, religious fervor 
and melting tenderness, reaches its climax of persua¬ 
sive energy only under the inspiration of the Spirit of 
God. This can never be simulated. Vociferation, 
boisterousness and physical vehemence are clumsy and 
disgusting counterfeits of genuine spiritual unction, 
easily detected by an intelligent audience. The arts of 
the perfect elocutionist, when completely naturalized, 
may help, as in the case of Whitefield, to widen and 
deepen the channel through which the warm, liquid 
stream of power may flow forth into all hearts, but they 
can never originate that power. It was a capital offence 
to counterfeit the “holy anointing oil” (Ex. xxx. 33) 
in the Mosaic dispensation. Can it be a venial sin in 
the more glorious dispensation of the Spirit to stand up 
in the name of Christ and pour out upon a multitude of 
immortal souls needing impulse heavenward a wretched 
counterfeit unction, a mixture of fine prose rhetoric 
garnished with scraps of poetry and seasoned with the 
grimaces and gestures of an actor? Did not our Lord 
Jesus have such preachers in view when He said: 
“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we 
not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name cast out 


226 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


demons? and in thy name done many miracles? And 
then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; 
depart from me, ye that work iniquity”? (Matt. vii. 
22, 23). Meyer, the exegete, describes the distin¬ 
guishing feature in these preachers as “ an impure, 
often fanatical, boldness in the faith, which, though 
enabling them to perform acts of a marvellous nature, 
yet fails to exercise any influence upon their own moral 
life—just the sort of thing described by Paul in I Cor. 
xiii. 2 — and the manifestations of which are to be met 
with in every age, especially in times of great religious 
excitement.” These solemn words of warning of our 
Lord should be written in large letters over the study 
table of every preacher, to be pondered in the prepa¬ 
ration of every sermon. They are never read by the 
writer without awakening him to self-distrust and self- 
examination. This is especially true since reading 
again and again Stalker’s fifth lecture of his Yale lec¬ 
tures, 1891, entitled “The Preacher as a False Prophet,” 
in which he shows “ that the true prophets had to face 
the opposition, not of heathen and not of the openly 
irreligious among their own countrymen only, but of 
those who had the name of God in their mouths and 
were publicly recognized as His oracles. To us these 
are now false prophets, because time has found them 
out and the Word of God has branded them as they 
deserve; but in their own day they were regarded as 
true prophets; and doubtless many of them never 
dreamed that they were not entitled to the name. 
They must have been a numerous and powerful body. 

“This is an appalling fact, that the public repre- 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


227 


sentatives of religion should ever have been the worst 
enemies of religion; but it cannot be denied that even 
in Christendom, and that not once or twice, the same 
condition of things has existed.” 

The question, Is my ministry of God’s Word in 
obedience to the Holy Ghost, or is it in the interest of 
selfish ends? is of vital importance. It is the question 
whether I am a false or a true prophet. It is, accord¬ 
ing to Him who is the appointed Judge, the question on 
which eternal destiny hinges. Hence it would be well 
to examine such criteria as are at hand to decide this 
momentous question. 

I. The Holy Spirit stands by all the truth that He 
has inspired. If any vital truth is unaccepted and 
unpopular and has largely dropped out of your ser¬ 
mons, you may know that your preaching is not 
prompted by the Spirit of truth. You have no valid 
reason for thinking that your proclamation of such 
generally accepted truth as you do preach is a proof 
that you are thus far submissive to the dictation of the 
Spirit, for you may be actuated by motives entirely 
impure and selfish. He is not a herald loyal to his 
king who proclaims only such commands as please him 
and neglects every disagreeable order. This would be 
the ruling of every jurist. A young curate in England 
was asked what were the favorite themes of his preach¬ 
ing. He replied, “Free trade and the pleasant parts 
of Christianity.” He probably uttered some kind of 
ethical or economical truth in every sermon. Does 
this prove that the Holy Spirit had anything to do 
with his preaching? “ How often we ask with real 


228 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


sadness, whence the remarkable impotence of preach¬ 
ing in our time? It is because we concoct our gospels 
too much out of the laboratories of our understanding; 
because we preach too many disquisitions and look 
for effects correspondent only with the natural forces 
exerted.” 

2. The Holy Spirit inspires only that ministry which 
is subordinate to Jesus Christ, whom He glorifies. He 
cannot be the soul of that ministry which exalts self 
above Christ. The Spirit’s oneness of nature with Him 
forbids it. There are only two themes of preaching, 
Christ and self. Most evangelical preachers begin 
with the exaltation of Christ. But many come to an 
imperceptible switch from Christ to self, and from that 
point in their history they use the ministry of the Son 
of God as a ladder up which they climb to grasp the 
object of selfish ambition, ecclesiastical promotion, lit¬ 
erary excellence, oratory, a college professorship, an 
editorship, money, social standing, or some other soap 
bubble. Many are using the gospel ministry as a 
stepping-stone to something better in their estimation. 
The Holy Ghost does not dwell in stepping-stone 
preachers. A true minister filled with the Holy Ghost 
feels a repugnance to a college presidency or professor¬ 
ship, and he yields to the call only when he is con¬ 
vinced that he can be more effectively preaching Christ 
in teaching others to preach. It was this that recon¬ 
ciled Dr. Chalmers to the chair of theology in the 
Edinburgh University. He came to see “that while 
many were called to catch and salt fish, some men &re 
called to make salt.” 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


229 


3. The Holy Spirit, the successor to Christ in pre¬ 
siding over His Church, has a special sympathy with 
those whom He designates as His representatives 
— the poor to whom He preached. He sent to John, 
His forerunner, this crowning proof of His Messiah- 
ship towering above His miracles, “ and the poor have 
the gospel preached unto them.” Here is the crite¬ 
rion. You have two ministerial calls; you are free from 
debt, and have a fair outfit. One call is to a rich and 
fashionable church with a large salary; the other is to 
a congregation of laboring people in “ a shoe town” on 
half the other salary. The size of the two congre¬ 
gations and of the two cities is the same. I do not say 
that the Holy Spirit does not call eminently spiritual 
men to rich city churches. Edward Payson was called 
to such a church, where he thundered and lightened 
like another Sinai for twenty years against every form 
of iniquity. The Holy Ghost evidently dwelt in him, 
and prompted his utterances. When called to more 
lucrative salaries in Boston and New York he declined, 
and refused an increase in his salary in Portland. This 
spirit of self-sacrifice is a sufficient proof of his freedom 
from self-seeking and his willingness to follow whither¬ 
soever the Spirit might lead. 

What we do say is that men of great gifts are needed 
among the poor, and when they are called to minister 
to them, and gladly accept a call to the rich instead, 
we are inclined to say that the Holy Spirit does not 
prefer the rich to the poor, but rather the reverse. A 
preference of that call which evinces the greatest self- 
sacrifice, and which brings the preacher into closer 


230 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


sympathy with the least of Christ’s brethren, is an evi¬ 
dence that the preacher is a temple of the Holy Ghost. 

Says Austin Phelps of the true ideal of a Christian 
minister: “ He should be able to go, without a ripple 
of difference in his sense of personal distinction, to the 
Fiji Islands or to the Fifth Avenue in New York.” 
Robert Hall says: “If God should send two angels 
down from heaven, one to sweep the streets of London 
and the other to be lord mayor, there would be no dis¬ 
pute between them as to which is the more honorable 
calling.” What in this respect is possible in angels 
is possible in the entirely sanctified men and women, 
hundreds of whom are choosing the wretched abodes 
of heathenism in which to spend, in the name of Christ, 
lives of uncomplaining privation and toil. When Lorenzo 
Dow was told of a preacher who had a call to two 
churches, offering the same salary, and was in doubt 
which to accept, but finally decided that he was called 
by the Holy Ghost to the church which added his fire¬ 
wood to the salary, that eccentric but keen evangelist 
irreverently said: “ It was a wooden Holy Ghost.” 

We are frequently asked whether the preacher should 
seek after the induement of power as a special gift. 

If you are conscious of the indwelling of the Spirit as 
purifying and ruling with supreme authority, it is very 
appropriate to pray as Paul did, for utterance and 
boldness in the proclamation of truths distasteful to the 
unregenerate and to the unsanctified. If you have not 
such a consciousness of the presence of the Holy Spirit, 
it would be more complimentary to Him to ask for 
Himself first, and for His gift afterwards. The Spirit 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


231 


rarely intrusts His power to those who do not com¬ 
pletely intrust themselves to His cleansing and guid¬ 
ance; He does not give His power separate from Him¬ 
self. Ask for Him for His own sake, if you wish to 
show Him proper respect as a person. His permanent 
indwelling is in itself the noblest end at which you can 
aim; to aim at something beyond Him is derogatory 
to Him as divine in His nature and equal to the Father 
and the Son in glory and majesty. Everybody wants 
power; few want God. It is not a proof of a high 
state of grace to ask for power, even the power of the 
Holy Ghost; this is what Simon Magus wanted; the 
secret motive may centre in the glory of self on the 
top round of the ladder of ministerial ambition. There 
is a chance for mixed motives even in a preacher of 
undoubted piety. Many pray earnestly for power in 
their work and receive it not, because they do not as¬ 
sume the only posture in which the power can work; 
they want to get possession of the power of the Spirit 
and use it as they please. God wants the power of 
the Spirit to get the mastery of them and use them as 
He pleases* If they would surrender to the power of 
the Spirit to rule in them, that power would surrender 
to them to rule through them. “ God gives the Holy 
Spirit to them who obey Him,” and in His abiding 
fulness to them only. His wisdom cannot intrust power 
to the disobedient. The more perfect the obedience 
the larger the power of the Spirit. “ If thou wouldst 
have this power work in thee, bow very low in rever¬ 
ence before the holy presence that dwelleth in thee, 
which asks thy surrender to His guidance even in the 


232 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


least things. Walk very humbly, in holy fear lest in 
anything thou shouldst fail in knowing or doing His 
holy will.” 

Moroever, remember that the power of the Spirit is 
never bestowed as a premium to indolence. There is 
sound Christian theology in the fable of pagan ^Esop 
about Hercules helping the mired teamster only when 
he put his own shoulder to his wheel. Asking for the 
Holy Spirit for our own enjoyment may not be a 
vicious motive. Certainly it is not the highest; this 
sways you only when your purpose is to glorify the 
adorable Son of God. God is constantly seeking men 
and women of such a purpose to clothe them with 
power, “ for the eyes of Jehovah run to and fro through¬ 
out the whole earth, to show himself strong [strongly 
to hold with, Hebrew], in behalf of them whose 
heart is perfect toward him ” (II Chron. xvi. 9). 

The power of the Spirit may be in exercise while 
the preacher is unconscious of it. He may not feel it, 
though sometimes the speaker is aware that a power 
outside of him has descended upon him, endowing with 
spiritual might. To this Spurgeon often gave testi¬ 
mony. But ordinarily the Spirit’s power, like gravita¬ 
tion, magnetism and electricity, is silent and unseen, 
giving a penetrating energy to the speaker’s words, 
even when they seem powerless to himself. Dr. Stephen 
Olin had a marvellous experience of this sort in his 
ministry in Charleston, S. C. Several persons dated 
their conversion from an evening sermon of which he 
was so ashamed that he dared not meet any of his hear¬ 
ers, but retired from the church through a back door 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


233 


into a dark graveyard, and with difficulty found his way 
to his lodgings. It is to be noted that in God’s chosen 
order of sequences weakness and power coexist in a 
wonderful way. “ When I am weak , then am I strong .” 
This is Paul’s testimony, who also declares that God 
takes weak things to confound the mighty. This para¬ 
dox disappears when we assert that the weakness is 
only the human side of strong faith in God. It was a 
favorite remark of one of God’s modern sons of thun¬ 
der, that “ there are two persons in the universe to 
whom all things are possible : one is God, and the other 
is he that believeth.” It has been well said that faith 
grows strong in the dark. “ The Holy Spirit hides 
Himself in the weak things that God has chosen, that 
no flesh may glory in his presence.” 

If there is any sight especially painful, it is that of 
a professed minister of Christ destitute of power in a 
world over which Satan has usurped dominion. He 
ought to be the most wretched man on earth, who 
knows how wicked and miserable is a world of sinners 
lost, but has no power to bring any of these palsied 
souls to Christ, the Healer and Giver of life. “ He 
lays a kind but helpless hand upon the wound. He 
tries to relieve it with his sympathy and his philoso¬ 
phy. He is the source of all he says. There is no 
God behind him.” 

The preacher needs the fulness of the Holy Spirit to 
make him an open and wide aqueduct for the water of 
life to flow to every soul with whom he comes in con¬ 
tact. This implies large faith, the door through which 
God comes into the human soul, and the door of the 


234 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


communication of grace from the believer to the unbe¬ 
liever. It implies also what John calls “ perfect love,” 
with its kindred graces, meekness, gentleness and pa¬ 
tience. The altruists of our generation have made the 
great philosophic discovery that the way to induce love 
or any other virtue in our neighbor is to exhibit it in 
ourselves, a principle embodied in Christ’s precept, 
“love your enemies,” and in Paul’s “heap coals of fire 
on his head,” not to burn him up but to melt him 
down. Only the indwelling Holy Spirit can transform 
a man naturally selfish into such a personality. 

But the preacher needs the Spirit of God also for 
the other element of ministerial success, the truth. He 
can appropriate its inmost essence only as he is quick¬ 
ened and transformed by “ the Spirit of truth.” It is 
one thing to have an intellectual knowledge of Christian 
theology, but quite another to have Christ, “the truth 
and the life,” incorporated into your inmost self, and 
“ formed within, the hope of glory.” The difference 
between these two kinds of knowledge, the theoretical 
and the experimental, is the difference between theol¬ 
ogy and religion, the body and the soul of Christianity. 
No preacher can have the truth thus wrought into the 
very texture of his being except by the abiding pres¬ 
ence of the Spirit of truth giving reality and vitality to 
gospel truth. It is because of a lack of this presence 
that doubt obscures the inward vision, substitutes nebu¬ 
lous language for clear-cut, positive enunciation of sav¬ 
ing truth, and makes the sermon a barren literary 
achievement in the presence of immortal souls fainting 
and dying of spiritual hunger. “ Even spiritual truth 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


235 


is robbed of its power when held, not in the life of the 
Spirit, but in the wisdom of man. Where truth enters 
into the inward parts as God desires, there it becomes 
the life of the Spirit.” Many a preacher satisfies him¬ 
self with the imagination that truth which only touches 
the surface of the soul, the intellect and reason, will in 
some way strike its roots into the rock beneath and 
produce a spiritual harvest. The effect of such preach¬ 
ing is nothing more than that of human argument and 
wisdom, that never pierces the hearer’s heart as with a 
sword, revealing the sinful spirit to itself. 

When several Unitarian theological students came to 
Father Taylor after one of his mighty sermons in the 
Seamen’s Bethel, and asked him to teach them to 
preach, the preacher replied: “You must first have 
the preach in you, then the preaching will take care of 
itself.” We interpret this advice as meaning that gos¬ 
pel truth in its reality and divine substance must be 
received in the inmost soul and held as an actual posses¬ 
sion, the life of the things which others regard as only 
shadows. The Spirit is the inner life of divine truth. 
In His teaching He does not employ symbols, words, 
thoughts, impressions and images like a human teacher 
or writer. He has the ability to enter the very roots 
of our life and to secrete the truth of God there as a 
seed of divine life. Received by faith and watered by 
prayer, it becomes a banyan tree overshadowing the 
whole being. Such a preacher will become a Wesley, 
a Finney, a Moody or a Payson, not in the extent, but 
in the kind of spiritual success. All we have said 
about the inability of the unspiritual mind to be a me- 


236 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


dium of vital truth is sustained by Paul, who says: 
“ No man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy 
Spirit” (I Cor. xii. 3). If I had the ear of every young 
preacher and of every student of theology, I would en¬ 
deavor to convince them of the utter incapacity of hu¬ 
man wisdom in its very highest development to grasp 
the real inward spiritual meaning of a divine revelation 
without the internal illumination of the abiding Para¬ 
clete. It is only as both speaker and hearer are spirit¬ 
ual, under the rule of the Spirit, that there can be a 
successful communication of gospel truth. 

“The Holy Ghost, who is in essential and perfect 
communion with the Father and the Son, reveals unto 
us eternal realities. He alone knows the infinite love 
of God with which He has loved us, for He alone can 
fathom the depth out of which this love proceeds. 
Thus what the Holy Ghost reveals and imparts is the 
knowledge of realities which are eternal in God. It is 
the Spirit Himself who teaches and enlightens. The 
truth itself \ the preaching of the gospel, the reading of 
the Scriptures, has no inherent power to bring knowledge 
into the soul. These are only the instruments, the 
Spirit is the agent; they are only the sword, the Spirit 
is the energy, the hand that wields it. They shall be 
taught of God. God causes the light of the gospel to 
shine into our hearts. How little we realize this truth, 
so comforting and full of encouragement! How apt 
are we to forget the living Spirit in the gifts and chan¬ 
nels which He uses ! How fond we are of placing our¬ 
selves in God’s place ; if not in the Father’s, in Christ’s ; 
if not in Christ’s, in that of the Spirit.” * Hence a 

*Dr. A. Saphir, ‘ Christ Crucified,” page 109. 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


237 


Christian worker without the Spirit dwelling within him 
is a cannon without an explosive, an organ without 
wind, an engine without steam, and a dynamo without 
electricity. He is a dead man preaching to dead souls. 
The same truths which he ineffectually utters would 
convict of sin and bring to Christ if they came all aglow 
from a soul baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire. 
This is not a mere theory. Barren ministries have 
been made abundantly fruitful by the advent of the 
Holy Spirit in the preacher’s heart. 

Says Stalker: “ What an audience looks for, before 
everything else, in the texture of a sermon, is the blood 
streak of experience; and truth is doubly and trebly 
true when it comes from a man who speaks as if he had 
learned it by his own work and suffering.” We should 
bear in mind that truth is in such a form as to reveal 
itself not merely to the intellect, but to the sensibilities, 
those allies of true persuasion. Gospel truth is not an 
abstraction. It has appeared in our world as a person. 
One man of all the generations has said: “ I am the 
truth.” We did not see Him, nor did we hear His voice 
on the mountain side and on the shore of the sea. But 
it is no privation. We are more than compensated for 
our lack of knowledge through our coarse bodily senses. 
We may know Him through the medium of a finer in¬ 
tuition. It is the office of the Holy Spirit to reveal the 
Son of God in the preacher of to-day, as He did in 
the apostle to the Gentiles. This inward revelation is 
necessary to the highest efficiency. Paul could not be a 
genuine apostle till he had seen Jesus with his bodily 
eyes. No man can be a genuine preacher till he has 


238 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


seen Jesus with his spiritual eyes. This promise, “ I 
will manifest myself unto him,” was not limited to the 
apostles. It belongs to all who believe and obey. 
This kind of truth, this seeing Christ, takes the chill out 
of the heart, the doubt out of the mind, and the interro¬ 
gation point out of the sermon. For some preachers 
betray such uncertainty that their sentences end with 
the rising inflection, as if they were questioning their 
own utterances. “True preaching is a testimony; it 
offers not things reasoned, in any principal degree, but 
things given, supernatural things, testifying them as be¬ 
ing in their power, by an utterance which they fill and 
inspire. It brings new premises, which, of course, no 
argument can create, and therefore speaks to faith.” * 

The voice of church history attests that without a 
clear and constant testimony to the divine personality 
and agency of the Holy Spirit, preaching is fruitless and 
the spirituality of the Church declines. Vain are the 
substitutes for the might of the Spirit — splendid archi¬ 
tecture, faultless rhetoric and charming eloquence in 
the pulpit, classical music in the choir and wealth and 
fashion in the pews. These may produce a delusive 
appearance of prosperity; numerous accessions of mem¬ 
bers more eager to get into good society than they are 
to abandon their sins; large audiences and an overflow¬ 
ing treasury. 

We live in a time when a section of Protestantism 
is fascinated by ritualism with its gorgeous ceremonial, 
robed priests, vested choirs, lighted candles, smoking 
censers, stately processions, intoned prayers, pro- 


* Dr. Horace Bushnell. 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


239 


nounced absolutions, and genuflections before the cross. 
This is a bad sign, indicating a desire to substitute 
something visible and sensuous for that which consti¬ 
tutes the healthful attraction, the true charm and glory 
of Christian worship, the presence and power of the 
invisible Spirit in believing hearts. It betokens an in¬ 
terior vacuum which the ritualist is trying to fill with 
external shows and sounds and shams. The Spirit of 
truth abhors these substitutes for Himself. Every mind 
in which the Holy Spirit dwells instinctively turns away 
in disgust from the chaff of ritualism. 

In all manner of Christian work — not embroidering 
altar-cloths and arranging pulpit nosegays — the first 
thing and the essential thing is that we shall be contin¬ 
ually receiving renewed induements of the Holy Spirit, 
styled by the seraphic Fletcher “ the quintessence of 
our holy religion." It might be truthfully styled the 
Magna Charta of the Church instead of “ the myth of 
apostolic succession ” as Phillips Brooks aptly called it. 
It certainly is “ the everlasting sign which shall not be 
cut off," the only continued miracle, the converting 
power on earth, instantaneously changing bad men into 
good men, the thorn into the fir tree, a transformation 
above the power of nature. The measure of this su¬ 
pernatural power in any local church is not determined 
by the caprice of an arbitrary sovereignty, but by the 
human fulfilment of divinely appointed conditions, the 
utter abandonment of the soul to the Holy Ghost as 
the Sanctifier and a hearty co-operation with Him as the 
Reprover and Regenerator. There is no effectual sub¬ 
stitute for the Holy Ghost as the Transformer, neither 


240 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


eloquence, nor personal magnetism, nor philosophy, nor 
even the energy of a purified human spirit, unless it is 
interpenetrated by the divine Spirit. 

There should be a careful study of revival preaching. 
There can be no genuine revival unless the conditions 
are fulfilled. The fallow ground must be broken up by 
driving the subsoil ploughshare of repentance through 
and through it. Begin at the house of God; there is 
much fallow ground in God’s field, the Church. There 
are many nominal Christians who do not realize that 
they are sinners in the sight of God. They are resting 
in church membership, promptly paid pew rents and 
weekly offerings, attendance upon preaching and the 
Lord’s supper, and the same general interest in the 
prosperity of the church to which they belong that 
is exhibited by liberalists and Romanists. They also 
contribute their share to the great charities of the de¬ 
nomination. But all these things a person backslidden 
in heart may do from other motives than pure love to 
our Lord Jesus. It may be the effect of habit. He 
may desire to retain the good opinion of the Christian 
public for purely personal ends. He may be making 
an ostentatious display of some virtues to compensate 
for some vices or to cover them up. Professors of 
Christianity are prone to sophisticate conscience when 
they are out of the strait and narrow way. They try 
to make their crookedness seem to be undistorted. 
Men spiritually dead have been known to simulate 
great fervor if called on to pray in public. Sometimes 
an excessive bustling activity in the externals of Chris¬ 
tianity is prompted by the consciousness that the inner 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


241 


life has become extinct and the uneasy moral sense 
must have something to lean upon. What all these 
characters need is plain and fearless preaching which 
uncovers their sins and drives them out of all their false 
refuges. Their sins should be specially detailed. Their 
sins of omission, which are most frequently overlooked, 
should be enumerated and dwelt upon. What a cata¬ 
logue of neglects the faithful preacher might set in 
array before the members of his church — neglect of 
the Holy Scriptures , which do not feed them now as 
they once did, but they'appear dry and chaffy. Once 
they fed upon the Word with great delight; it was 
sweeter than honey. Now the daily paper is sought 
first in the morning, and on Sundays the Sunday news¬ 
paper with all its trash and flummery. Preach a ser¬ 
mon on the Bible so long neglected that damnation 
could be written on its dusty cover. Then, what a 
fearful neglect of family religion is prevalent in our 
churches. In many of our families the altar-stones 
have fallen down. The morning and evening sacrifice 
is no longer burned thereon. Business and the railroad 
train are put in place of God in the morning. The 
lodge, the club, the social party, the evening news¬ 
paper are instead of God at night. What will become 
of the children who hear not the voices of their parents 
in home worship? 

“Just as the twig is bent the tree is inclined.” 

■Let me testify to the praise of my heavenly Father that 
the twig of my childhood was bent heavenward by the 
voice of prayer about my cradle. Two of the four sons 
of my father were called to preash, and two of my own, 


242 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Rebuild the family altars and rekindle the fires, and 
Methodism of the next generation will feel the effect in 
the conversion of millions of her children. 

Preach on neglected communion with God in the 
closet, where all unworthy motives, such as the praise 
of men, are excluded. How common is the neglect of 
that indispensable condition of discipleship — self-denial! 
The term is rarely used. Many professors know its 
meaning by the dictionary only. They never have 
denied themselves a ribbon or a cigar for Christ and 
for His gospel. They are quite active in the pleasant 
parts of religion, but they shrink from everything that 
requires self-denial. That is too humiliating to pride. 
What they can do as well as not — flowers for the pul¬ 
pit or a bookmark for the Bible — they are willing to 
do, but they are not willing to sacrifice any comfort or 
any convenience for the advancement of the kingdom 
of Christ. They seem to think that God ought not to 
ask them to do disagreeable duties, and that He should 
feel that He was specially complimented by their conde¬ 
scending to take the name of Christians when there were 
so many high-toned and fashionable people outside the 
Church for them to associate with. How few the de- 
niers of self at the contribution box ! Here and there 
a widow with two mites, who gave not her surplus but 
her capital. Preach self-denial as absolutely essential 
to salvation. Many are utterly negligent of the highest 
well-being of their fellow-men, a point on which we 
have been forewarned that the final judgment will turn. 
They should be convicted of this sin by the faithful 
preacher. Says Dr, Finney: “ If your soul is not ago- 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


243 


nized for the poor benighted heathen, why are you such 
a hypocrite as to pretend to be a Christian? Why, 
your profession is an insult to Jesus Christ.” 

Preach repentance for the great sin of not believing 
God, great because it makes Him a liar. This sin, exist¬ 
ing wholly in the invisible realm of the spirit, is by the 
world and the worldly part of the Church deemed to be 
destitute of any moral quality. The preacher should 
put forth his whole strength to tear this destructive 
falsehood out of men’s minds, especially out of the 
minds of professed Christians. These frequently nega¬ 
tive God’s promises by their failure to believe, while 
sinners throw away God’s threatenings. Thus the 
whole Bible is rejected. 

Preach repentance for sins of commission, setting 
forth specifications of transgressions of the moral law 
as Christ did in His sermon on the mount. Read Wes¬ 
ley’s discourses on that sermon as a part of your prep¬ 
aration. I have been painfully observant of the decline 
of this kind of preaching in the modern pulpit. It is a 
bad sign of the times. It indicates that a soft theology 
is superseding the Biblical doctrines of our fathers. In 
addition to the miasma of liberalism that is in the air, 
a doctrine is prevalent in certain circles which negatives 
the law as binding on believers, and substitutes faith for 
repentance and holiness. Its teachers emphasize the 
fact that St. John does not speak of repentance either 
in his Gospel or in his Epistles. Negations prove noth¬ 
ing. He does not mention hell either. Both of the 
causes named tend to weaken the motives to repent¬ 
ance. But it is quite certain that it is absolutely essen- 


244 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


tial to the exercise of saving faith in Jesus Christ, and 
that every genuine revival is preceded by faithful 
preaching on this duty. 

Preaching should aim at definite results. We know 
of none more significant than radical conversions with a 
date, although a dateless conversion may be genuine. 
Yet it is very desirable that the Christian should be able 
to look back upon a definite emergence into newness of 
life, and to name the day of his espousals unto Christ. 
This is a great safeguard against the two doubts in re¬ 
spect to fundamentals: Is Christ the true Saviour? and 
does He save me? A sudden transition from darkness 
into the marvellous light by a pardon attested by 
God’s seal, the Holy Spirit, the agent of regener¬ 
ation and initial sanctification, is a type of Chris¬ 
tian experience quite difficult for scepticism to assail 
with success. It is a monumental proof of the divinity 
of the gospel. 

Such experiences were frequent in early Methodism 
because the type of preaching was such as to promote 
them. Clear-cut statements of saving truth produce 
sharply defined experiences. Hazy preaching makes 
nebulous conversions. When you stand under an arc- 
light and look at your shadow how surprised you are at 
the sharpness of the outline ! Every stray hair is indi¬ 
vidualized. Why? Because every ray of light streams 
from one point. Our figure hints at pointed sermons. 
What would come to pass if Methodism had an arc-light 
in every pulpit? We do not predict that every conver¬ 
sion would be Pauline. They would be more numerous 
ancj more genuine, but they would not all be striking, 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


245 


God has a great variety of operations in the kingdom 
of grace. 

Young preachers who have had a signal conversion 
are apt to forget this. They begin their ministerial life 
with a distinct view of the mode in which souls come 
into the kingdom of God, and of the spuriousness, of 
course, of all incomings which had not all the peculiari¬ 
ties of that mode. But when such preachers have in 
their pastoral work listened to the experience of some 
of their very best members, most spiritual and most 
active, they will find that their regulation mode of con¬ 
version is altogether too narrow for the wideness of 
God’s mercy. They will find persons full of faith and 
the Holy Ghost on whom the Sun of Righteousness 
arose in a period so cloudy that they cannot tell the 
day, and hardly the week, when His rays first shone 
into their hearts. The truth is that God works in the 
realm of grace as He does in nature, along certain es¬ 
tablished lines, as that summer shall follow spring, with 
fixed general features, but in such a \vay as to admit of 
a vast and beautiful diversity sometimes more surprising 
than the uniformity. 

Christianity faithfully applied to childhood results in 
frequent conversions without a date. It is natural that 
the transition of a little child of eight years from the 
world to Christ should be without a memorable strug¬ 
gle. Several of my most intimate friends who are adult 
believers, remarkable for their devotion and about as 
steadfast in their Christian career as the sun in the 
heavens, were converted when children, and are unable 
to celebrate any spiritual birthdays, There would be 


246 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

more of these in the Church to-day as shining lights if 
the contrast between the quiet mode of their conversion 
and the marvellous glare of some adults’ experiences 
had not induced them to throw away the little taper 
which the Spirit had lighted in their hearts. This is 
one of the evil results of conceiving that God works in 
only one way. We must respect dateless commonplace 
conversions, and give the subjects of them our confi¬ 
dence and a warm welcome to the Church, the fold of 
Christ. 

What we have said of conversion is in a less degree 
true of entire sanctification. This does not usually 
occur in immature age, and is generally a more signal 
event in the consciousness of the recipient. Yet there 
is even here an infinite variety. As to the space of 
time after justification, God has given us no almanac. 
While we know the agent, the Sanctifier, we know not 
the way He will take in any individual case. Many, 
especially outside of Methodism, have been wholly 
cleansed from depraved inclinations, and have not 
known it by the name given by John Wesley. They 
were athirst after God’s fulness, and they received the 
baptism or successive anointings of the Holy Spirit. 
They find themselves strong, joyful, victorious over 
every temptation, and having full assurance of faith. 
They have all the marks and concomitants of entire 
sanctification. 

In all preaching to believers the aim should be to 
make the feeble to become as David in strength, and 
the house of David as the angel of Jehovah. 

The relation of this subject to the various moral re~ 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


24; 


forms and attempted social reconstructions is a theme 
of practical interest on which we would like to dwell. 
Some preachers of the gospel are preaching sociology. 
There are well-meaning people who wish to abate and 
suppress evils which prey upon human society by 
ignoring the only radical and effectual cure by the new 
birth. Many of these are philanthropic, but not Chris¬ 
tian. They answer very well Father Taylor’s descrip¬ 
tion of one of his sons-in-law, when, in reply to the 
question whether he was a Christian, the old man elo¬ 
quent replied, “ No, but he is a very sweet sinner.” 
The failure of all such reformers arises from their be¬ 
ginning with the mass and not with the individual, and 
their cleansing of the outside of the cup and platter, 
and their stopping at the rectification of the outward 
conduct, leaving the heart, the innermost seat of char¬ 
acter, unchanged. They suppress the symptoms with¬ 
out curing the disease. This may not be a blessing, 
but rather a damage. It has been said that God shows 
His great wisdom in attaching outward very unpleasant 
sequences to the evil in men’s hearts, sequences in the 
shape of vices, gusts of anger, pains of body and mind 
and “ woes that follow at the heels of sin.” If men 
could get all their misdeeds out of sight and still keep 
sin in their hearts shut in from every human eye, it 
would be the greatest obstruction to their highest well¬ 
being. We have all heard of the street angel and the 
home devil. He is further from the kingdom of 
heaven than the street devil and home angel. The 
external purgation of the world by a grand sweep of 
outward reform without implanting new springs of 


248 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

action in a regeneration of the natural man, if such a 
reform were possible, would give the race a paradise 
restored, but a paradise of hypocrites, heavenly in be¬ 
havior but satanic in principle. This is the aim of all 
the naturalistic reformers. But the true preacher, who 
imitates his Master in his method of doing good, per¬ 
ceiving the folly of smoothing up the world in its sin 
and alienation from God, boldly cries to sinners as 
well bred as Nicodemus, “ Ye must be born again, 
born of the Spirit.” The new birth is the only effect¬ 
ual safeguard of society. This is taught in Old Testa¬ 
ment prophecy. “ Salvation will God appoint for 
walls and bulwarks ” (Isa. xxvi. 1). 

If Christianity is going to regenerate society, its 
heralds must not stop when they have portrayed its 
vices and crimes. They must lay bare their fountain, 
the sin of men’s heart, the sin of unbelief toward Jesus 
Christ, and insist on the new birth as the only cure. 
The Spirit’s great office is to “ convict of sin, because 
they believe not in me.” 

The gospel has a style of address peculiarly its own. 
It is not the stately and ornate oration of the Grecian 
rhetor or the Roman orator, but the unpretending ut¬ 
terance of the herald. It is to proclaim words put 
into the mouth by a higher authority. Hence Jesus 
Christ does not call His ministers dialecticians, advo¬ 
cates or orators, but simply preachers, proclaiming that 
the Messiah has come, and exhorting to the recep¬ 
tion of His gospel. One of the first evidences of de 
parture on the part of the Church from the simplicity 
of Christ is seen in the popular favor shown to those 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


249 


who have ceased to be preachers heralding the world’s 
Saviour, and have become orators, using Scripture texts 
as convenient staples to hang a chain of brilliant pe¬ 
riods upon. That is a false and fatal refinement which 
takes offence at the plain and earnest preaching of 
Christ. It always indicates that the godless spirit of 
Grecian culture, which regards Christ crucified as fool¬ 
ishness, has infused its subtle poison into the Church. 
There is a widely prevalent mistake respecting the 
nature of sacred eloquence. Splendid rhetoric, fault¬ 
less gestures, pleasing illustrations, brilliant imagery 
and flashing gems of poetry often pass for genuine 
eloquence. But here are only paste diamonds. When 
your preacher is taking to himself wings and soaring 
to the empyrean on some grandiloquent passage, and 
you mentally exclaim or whisper to your neighbor, 
“ O, how eloquent! ” real eloquence has not been 
reached, because you are not swayed by the thoughts 
and melted into penitence, or lifted out of yourself 
into the life divine. You are still a critic. True elo¬ 
quence will always lift you above the critical attitude. 
You cease to think of the man, his diction, voice 
and action; you think only of the burning truth which 
pours forth a molten stream from the furnace of the 
preacher’s glowing heart. 

When you look at a picture, if you are thinking only 
of the paints and how they were laid on, you are gaz¬ 
ing at a mere daub, and not at the work of a great 
master. He does not permit you to think of the color¬ 
ing or of the artist. He allows you to see nature only, 
so perfectly has he mastered the art of concealing art. 


250 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


When you retire from the church admiring the preacher 
instead of crying, “ God, be merciful to me a sinner,” 
or, “ Create in me a clean heart,” you have been lis¬ 
tening to a journeyman and not to a master of sacred 
eloquence. Do you think that Felix sat in wonder at 
the diction of St. Paul as he waxed warm and his 
imagination caught fire as he reasoned of righteous¬ 
ness, and Mount Sinai was thrown upon the canvas, 
and the awful darkness settled upon its summit, and 
the lightnings and thunderings and the voice of the 
trumpet, waxing louder and louder, were portrayed, 
while Felix feels the earth quaking beneath the tread 
of Jehovah? Do you suppose that he nudged his 
Jewish wife at his elbow, exclaiming, “ How sublime ! 
what a graphic imagination this countryman of yours 
has”? 

Then when St. Paul portrays the tragedy of Calvary, 
the darkening skies, the rending rocks, the opening 
graves, and the Son of God bowing His head in death, 
praying for His enemies, do you think that the Roman 
governor felt like clapping his hands in applause as 
at a well-acted drama? When the bold and faithful 
preacher spoke of temperance to the tippling and li¬ 
centious sinner on the tribunal, portraying the drunk¬ 
ard’s grave of shame and hell of torment, it is not 
supposable that the royal toper cried out to Lysias, 
the chief of his staff, “ Splendid! splendid! What 
excellence this Jew might have attained, even rivalling 
'Hortentius and Cicero, if he had been schooled at 
Rome ! ” Instead of this, Felix, conscience-smitten 
at the vivid picture in the gospel mirror of his own 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


251 


dissolute career, is vainly endeavoring to stanch the 
tears welling up from eyes unused to weep, as Paul, by 
the dark ghost of what Felix is, flings upon the can¬ 
vas the bright ideal of what he might have been. 
When Paul reaches the thirdly of his sermon, the 
judgment to come, Felix is sitting with downcast eye, 
and forehead resting on his hand. We may easily im¬ 
agine what was the course of that high argument. The 
materials would be chiefly drawn from the moral and 
religious ideas of the pagan sinner before him: first, 
an appeal to his own moral sense, the finger point 
within, directing him to the hour when justice will 
mount her tribunal and adjudicate the affairs of men; 
then a corroborative reference to Roman mythology,, 
involving the judicial scrutiny of the shades in the in¬ 
fernal world; and, lastly, the grand concluding argu¬ 
ment used on Mars Hill: “ But now God commandeth 
all men everywhere to repent: because he hath ap¬ 
pointed a day, in which he will judge the world in 
righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; 
whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that 
he hath raised him from the dead.” 

Here follow the infallible proofs of Jesus’ resurrec¬ 
tion, confirming all His claims, especially that of the 
future judgment of the world. Then the fearless 
preacher makes Felix see the great white throne, and 
the awful Judge, attended by myriads of angels, in 
majesty sweep down from the skies, and hear the trump 
of Gabriel calling the slumbering dead from land and 
sea, and the cry of the wicked for the rocks and hills 
to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb, and the sen- 


252 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

tence to the company at the left hand, “ Depart, ye 
cursed, into everlasting fire.” Felix is no longer the 
cool critic that he was when he took his seat on the 
tribunal. Under a tide of religious emotions awakened 
in his bosom by the faithful presentation of God’s 
truth, he has lost sight of Paul; he has forgotten his 
Hebrew brogue, his violation of the rules of oratory, 
or his conformity to them. Matters of greater impor¬ 
tance occupy his thoughts. “My sins, my sins; the 
judgment, the judgment.” This is eloquence. Felix 
does not say it is. Paul may not think that he has 
been eloquent. But the end of preaching has been 
attained: a hardened sinner has been awakened and 
made to tremble before God. This is preaching, “ not 
with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstra¬ 
tion of the Spirit and of power.”* 

There is much preaching which the Holy Ghost can¬ 
not use for the conviction and conversion of the unre- 
gerate and the sanctification of believers. It is gener¬ 
ally true that the sermon which has most of the Holy 
Scriptures appropriately quoted in proof of the argu¬ 
ment will be used by the Spirit to the best effect. 

The themes of the preacher should be the truths 
which the Holy Spirit enforces upon the world — sin, 
righteousness and judgment. These momentous doc¬ 
trines, of which the Paraclete was to convince the world, 
most intimately pertain to the whole human family 
and every individual member thereof. To herald these 
truths is the great mission of the Church till the end of 
the world. To withhold them is treason to Christ, and 


* See Appendix, Note H. 


THE SPIRIT AND PREACHING. 


253 


a robbery of the Holy Spirit of His own sword, and con¬ 
cealment of the only medicine that can heal a leprous 
and perishing race. 

Do not tone down God’s awakening truth. Do not 
dilute it. Do not destroy its pungency by your modi¬ 
fications. Do not obscure it by your philosophy. As 
Ann Phillips said to her husband, “ Don’t shilly-shally, 
Wendell.” Says Channing, “ No man is fit to preach 
the truth who is not ready to be a martyr to the truth.” 
Says the same great preacher of Christian ethics : “ One 
great reason of the inefficacy of the ministry is the 
want of faith in a higher operation of Christianity in 
the higher development of humanity than is now pos¬ 
sessed. As long as the present condition of the Chris¬ 
tian world shall be regarded as ultimate, as long as our 
religion shall be thought to have done already its chief 
work on earth, as long as the present corruptions of 
the Church and the State shall be acquiesced in as laws 
of nature, and shall stir up no deep agonizing desire of 
reform, so long the ministry will be comparatively 
dead.” It is the power of the gospel to transfigure hu¬ 
man society by transforming human hearts and thus 
make a new heaven and a new earth, that should in¬ 
spire the preacher with courage and persistent appli¬ 
cation of regenerative truth as the Holy Spirit’s instru¬ 
ment of this new creation. The world has scarcely 
begun to feel the power of Christ to save the lost when 
regenerative truth shall be pungently and generally 
preached in reliance on the personal Holy Ghost. Do 
you ask what are regenerative truths? We answer: 
The idea of a holy God, of sin, of the law, of the atone- 


254 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


ment, of the day of judgment, of immortality, of 
heaven and hell determined by the human will. Set 
the whole firmanent ablaze with the glow and heat of 
these eternal verities, and your preaching cannot be 
fruitless. 


SPIRITUAL WALKING. 


255 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


'walking in the comfort of the holy ghost. 
HIS is designed to be the normal life of the be¬ 



liever. The Holy Spirit has two distinct kinds 


of activity in His earthly mission. His delight¬ 
ful work is to comfort, strengthen and cheer Christians. 
His strange work is to convert sinners — I call it strange 
because it is strongly allied to the wrath of God. It 
has been well said that judgment is His strange work, 
in which a God of love finds no pleasure. I cannot 
think that the Holy Spirit finds gratification in admin¬ 
istering rebuke to those who sin against a holy God. 
It is sad to think that even in the case of many who 
have been born of the Spirit, He exercises toward them 
more frequently the unpleasant office of conviction 
than the pleasant office of approval and comfort. How 
few disciples there are who know the Holy Ghost in the 
latter office. What is His comfort? He brings into 
our hearts, if we fully believe in Jesus, the glorified 
Giver, above all, the consciousness that we are pleasing 
the Father by the power of the Son; that we are rec¬ 
onciled children making glad our Father. “ How long,” 
asks one, “ will Christians introvert the offices of the 
Holy Spirit, and oblige Him to be in their daily walk 
more convincing than comforting ? ” Of what sin does the 
Spirit convict? Unbelief. It is only because of unbe- 


256 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


lief that so many Christians, looking back a day, a week 
or a year, have not the testimony in their souls that 
their life has pleased God; and so the Spirit is obliged 
again and again, in fulfilling the law of love by which 
He acts, to take up His office of convicting of sin. 
At last many children of God lose all faith in the pos¬ 
sibility that they may for any length of time live a 
life pleasing to their heavenly Father. Then they 
begin to look in the Bible for a justification of this 
wretched lowering of the standard of holy living and 
diminishing of the glorious privilege of living in cloud¬ 
less communion with the Father and the Son while 
walking in the comfort of the Holy Ghost. This they 
find in misinterpreting the seventh chapter of the Epistle 
to the Romans and a few other perverted texts in Paul’s 
Epistles, and one in I John, “ If we say we have no sin, 
we deceive ourselves.” Having dragged the standard 
down to the low level of “ necessary ” daily sinning, they 
have exchanged the comfort of the Spirit for convic¬ 
tion— a worse bargain than Homer speaks of when a 
certain man exchanged his gold for brass, or “ brassed 
his gold.” Where the members of any church that 
have thus exchanged their gold have become a majority 
and their influence is preponderating, it is natural for 
them to delight to see their degraded standard set up 
in their pulpit. The old standard is now considered as 
obsolete. It is an uncomfortable rebuke. 

Thus, in many instances, the standard is changed. 
The wishes of the church mould the preacher. Demos¬ 
thenes tells the Athenians that they make their ora¬ 
tors. They speak what the churches wish to hear. 


SPIRITUAL WALKING. 


25; 


In this way a generation of Christians is born into the 
church who have never heard of the strange doctrine 
of walking in the comfort of the Holy Ghost under 
cloudless skies, victorious over every wilful sin, and de¬ 
livered from the former intestine war — the flesh striv¬ 
ing against the Spirit. This answers our question why 
so few, relatively, in modern times testify to a con¬ 
tinuous walk in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. 

But this is a blessing that is not dependent on the 
majorities. The condition of its existence is not “ a 
count of heads and a clack of tongues.” It rests on 
faith in the promise of our ascended and glorified 
Christ appearing in heaven for me to-day and sending 
down the greatest gift that men can receive or heaven 
can send. 

It may be said that “ this style of life is practicable 
for only a very few, such as ministers whose minds are 
always filled with gospel truth and who are not jostled 
about in contact with rough men, and for retired old 
men and women living on the interest of safely invested 
funds; these, having few perplexities and vexations, 
may be able to live in serene and uninterrupted com¬ 
munion with God through the conscious abiding of the 
Comforter. But this is impossible with merchants mak¬ 
ing hundreds of bargains every day; with operatives in 
mills, in close contact with many who believe not in 
Jesus Christ and obey not the moral principles of His 
gospel; with mothers shut up with a troop of quarrel¬ 
some children, and with many other classes of people 
who have a hard lot in life.” Can we quote any instances 
of walking in the comfort of the Holy Ghost amid 


258 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


such perplexities? We find many such in church his¬ 
tory, but we will cite only two, one a clergyman and 
the other a layman. The record of the first is this: 
“ In stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in 
deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty 
stripes save one [a hundred and ninety-five]. Thrice 
was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I 
suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in 
the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in 
perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, 
in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils 
in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among 
false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watch¬ 
ings often, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, 
by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good re¬ 
port.” What is his testimony to his own interior life 
while running the gauntlet through these perils and 
sufferings? “ I have learned in whatsoever state I am, 
therein to be content; in everything and in all things 
have I learned the secret both to be filled and to be 
hungry, both to abound and to suffer want.” From 
whom did he learn this wonderful secret? Not from 
the stoics, but from the indwelling Spirit of Christ. 
For he says, “ I can do all things in him that strength¬ 
ened! me” (Phil. iv. 11—13, Revised Version). 

The business of our illustrious layman, that of a 
premier managing the vast, varied and conflicting in¬ 
terests of an empire of a hundred and twenty provinces, 
would naturally be regarded as incompatible with a high 
degree of spirituality. But Daniel, though living in the 
pre-Pentecostal era and watched by eagle-eyed jeal- 


SPIRITUAL WALKING. 


259 


ousy, “ three times a day went into his chamber, and 
opened his windows toward heaven, to breathe the heav¬ 
enly air. The more business we have, the more we want 
heavenly air.” As Dr. Bushnell believes that Socrates 
and Plato were regenerated “ by a special mission of 
the Holy Ghost,” so we believe that Daniel was sustained 
in his unconquerable fidelity to the God of Abraham by 
the special indwelling of the Third Person of the Trinity. 

We live in an age when liberalists and agnostics 
covertly undermine Christianity by the insinuation that 
its principles are ideal and altogether too lofty to be 
perfectly obeyed by men and women who have been 
crippled and diminished in their moral capacity by sin. 
This is the view from the plane of naturalism. The 
supernaturalism of the indwelling Spirit declares that 
“ where sin abounded grace does much more abound.” 
Glory to God ! 

The doctrine of Jesus Christ respecting human re¬ 
sponsibility is that it is measured by our original tal¬ 
ents and favorable or unfavorable environment. Where 
much is given, much will be required. 

The patriarchal dispensation afforded little religious 
knowledge. Contrasted with our privileges it was as 
the light of the moon to the sun. We may discover 
our responsibility in the study of a patriarchal charac¬ 
ter which adorned the earth more than three thousand 
years before the day of Pentecost. 

The phrase, “walked with God,” is in the Bible ap¬ 
plied to only two individuals of the human race whose 
names are known, Enoch and Noah (Gen. v. 22; 
vi. 9). “It must be distinguished,” says the cele- 


26 o 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


brated commentator, Delitzsch, “from walking before 
God and walking after God,” since both the latter 
phrases smack* somewhat of the constraint of a legal 
service. Yet they are used to indicate genuine right¬ 
eousness and blamelessness of life “ under the law” — 
to use a Pauline expression for obedience prompted by 
fear rather than love. Servility seems to be implied in 
walking after any one as the servant follows his master. 
The same feeling is implied in walking before a supe¬ 
rior under whose eye we act impelled by a sense of awe 
and of espionage instead of the gladness and freedom 
of filial affection walking hand in hand with a loving 
Father. Walking with a person implies not only a kind 
of social equality, but the most confidential intercourse, 
each unbosoming himself to the other in the closest 
communion. Enoch’s walk with God is recorded twice, 
as something indeed extraordinary, but not impossible 
to every man in every age. It is put on record for 
universal imitation, not as a prodigy preternatural and 
abnormal. It was designed to be the norm or model 
of every human character. Let us now consider how 
much walking with God implies. 

i. It certainly evinces perfect harmony. “ How can 
two walk together except they be agreed ? ” There 
was a complete concurrence of the human will with the 
divine will. Enoch could have used the words of Faber: 

“ I worship thee, sweet will of God! 

And all thy ways adore, 

And every day I live I seem 
To love thee more and more.” 

There are some who insist that this delightful accord 


SPIRITUAL WALKING. 


26 l 


of the believer s will with God’s will in all the allotments 
of life, both painful and delightful, is only a beautiful 
ideal which can never be realized on the earth. It cer¬ 
tainly never can be realized on the plane of nature, nor 
can it be fully experienced on the plane of that initial 
grace into which we are brought by the new birth. It 
is possible only to that fulness of the Spirit which 
sheds abroad the love of God in the heart, filling it to 
the brim. It is easy for the child who perfectly loves 
his parents cheerfully to surrender to their commands. 

2. Enoch must also have had perfect trust in God. 
If he who comes to God must have faith, much more 
must he who locks arms and keeps step with Him 
have the utmost confidence in this divine companion. 
Mutual confidence is the root of friendship -and the in¬ 
dispensable requisite to the true wedlock of two souls. 
This unquestioning faith settles the question of divine 
guidance. In Enoch’s walk he left to God the choice 
of the way. Thus he was relieved of a source of much 
of the perplexity of life — painful solicitude respecting 
the way he should take at every crossroad in the 
journey of life, and often distressing regret for making 
a wrong choice. Like Enoch we are all strangers on 
the earth, walking in a path new to us and having 
many pleasant but fatal by-paths. To those who wish 
for unerring guidance there is an infallible Guide whose 
services are gratuitously rendered to complete trust. 
As perfect love casts out all tormenting fear, so perfect 
confidence casts out distressing doubt. 

3. Enoch must have had a very joyful sense of se¬ 
curity in his walk with God, being freed from all uncer- 


262 THE GOSPEL' OF THE COMFORTER. 

tainties respecting the direction of his journey and all 
fear of foes in ambuscade. By day and by night he 
could say to his omniscient and omnipotent conductor, 
“ Where Thou art guide, no ill can come.” Complete 
confidence in Him can walk straight forward regardless 
of the roar of the lion, the paw of the bear, the tooth 
of the tiger and the fang of the serpent. Here we 
have uncovered the secret of the fearlessness of Paul, 
the courage of Luther, the calmness of Wesley facing 
furious mobs from one end of England to the other, 
and the heroism of “ the noble army of martyrs ” in all 
the Christian ages. 

4. Enoch was characterized by a holiness so perfect 
as to need no finishing touch in death and no quaran¬ 
tine in purgatory preparatory to his introduction into 
a holy heaven. Perhaps God translated Enoch and 
Elijah to rebuke the Gnostic error that men cannot be 
perfectly holy in the body, and that death by separat¬ 
ing the spirit from “ the vile body ” falsely so called 
(see Phil. iii. 21, Revised Version) perfectly prepares 
the believer for the inheritance of the saints in light. 
We have searched in vain for any scriptural foun¬ 
dation of this doctrine, which discredits the blood of 
Jesus Christ as the means of cleansing from all sin, and 
discounts the Holy Spirit as the agent of entire sancti¬ 
fication in the present life. 

5. He who is on so intimate terms with our evei- 
blessed God will enjoy the highest possible degree of 
happiness. The fact that this great world is too small 
to satisfy the human soul demonstrates its likeness to 
God, inasmuch as it has an infinite capacity which only 


SPIRITUAL WALKING. 


263 


the Infinite One can fill. Fill this infinite capacity with 
the illimitable and fathomless ocean, the pleroma , “the 
fulness of him who filleth all in all,” and bliss will be 
supreme and eternal. The vicissitudes of life, from 
health to sickness, from riches to poverty, from ap¬ 
plause to abuse, may ripple the surface of this profound 
happiness, but they cannot disturb its immeasurable 
depths. The soul thus drinking from the fountain of 
felicity is at home everywhere, and sings with Madam 
Guyon in prison: 

“ My Lord, how full of sweet content 
I pass my years of banishment! 

Where’er I dwell, I dwell with Thee, 

In heaven, in earth, or on the sea.” 

What valid excuse have we for not walking with God 
as closely and as persistently as Enoch walked? Our 
circumstances are not less favorable. He lived in a 
pessimistic world rapidly degenerating and soon to be 
overwhelmed in the deluge. We live in an optimistic 
world that is on the up grade, steadily rising in moral 
tone. He lived before the God-Man appeared on the 
earth and left for our feet a shining path to an open 
heaven. He lived before the dispensation of the Com¬ 
forter, who comes to abide in the believer in Jesus 
Christ. His dispensation compared with ours is as the 
light of the stars to the cloudless noonday sun. 

He was not exempt from toil and care. While walk¬ 
ing with God, he did not dwell apart from society, 
a celibate in monastic seclusion, but begat sons anJ 
daughters, bore the burdens of a father in providing for 
his family and in disciplining his children and com- 


264 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


manding them to obey his precepts. It is quite prob¬ 
able that sometimes he had to secure obedience and 
respect for his authority by the use of the birch. 

In no respect was Enoch’s environment equal to ours 
in promoting communion with God. We cannot agree 
with Delitzsch that He walked in a visible human form 
beside Enoch three hundred years, a chronic theophany. 
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews enrolls Enoch 
among the heroes of faith : “ By faith” — not by sight 
— “ Enoch was translated.” His whole life was a life 
of faith. There are on the earth to-day many Enochs 
with whom God is walking and talking. The purpose 
of this chapter is to encourage many others to spend 
their lives in this glorious companionship in heaven¬ 
ward travel, “walking in the comfort of the Holy 
Ghost.” 


SPIRITUAL BABES AND SPIRITUAL MEN. 265 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


SPIRITUAL BABES AND SPIRITUAL MEN. 



HESE classes are contrasted in the Epistle to the 


J[ Hebrews in a manner not complimentary to the 
babes (iv. 12-14). 

Men become believers, in the New Testament sense, 
when through penitent faith they submit to God and 
receive Jesus Christ as both Saviour and Lord, and 
realize forgiveness of sins and the filial feeling which 
cries, “ Abba, Father.” To be a believer is to have 
conscious regeneration and the witness of the Spirit. 
Many are enrolled on earthly records as believers who 
have no such inward consciousness and witness. These 
need help which differs from that needed by true be¬ 
lievers. Our present chapter is directed to those who 
are sure that they have been delivered from the power of 
darkness and have been translated into the kingdom of 
the Son of God. There are many of these who rest in 
the fact of the new birth and regard it as the sum total 
of Christian experience and character. They are spir¬ 
itual babes, contented with their cradles. Says Dr. 
Parkhurst, the terror of Tammany, “When a man says 
that he is satisfied to keep to the rudiments, and that 
he has no appetite for anything more than the sincere 
milk of the Word, all depends upon whether he means 
by that that his one desire is to be religiously fed, or 


266 


THE GOSPEL OK THE COMFORTER. 


whether it is a confession that he has no Christian am¬ 
bition, and that he is satisfied to live all his days on 
religious gruel rather than to have holy gristle wrought 
into him by the appropriation and digestion of liberal 
quantities of the gospel’s ‘ strong meat.’ ” It is a great 
mistake to regard as a finality the faith which de¬ 
livers from guilt, and not as a preliminary to the glori¬ 
ous waiting attainments of perfected Christian manhood. 
To avoid this mistake which dwarfs so many believers 
we advise an earnest study of the progress of doctrine 
in the New Testament from the elementary utterances 
of Jesus Christ about repentance and seeking the king¬ 
dom of God up to His last address in which He an¬ 
nounces the incompleteness of the gospel and bids His 
disciples look for another and final stage of instruction 
under another Teacher whom He would soon send. 
Pentecost was the fulfilment of this promise and the 
completion of that visibly progressive course of doctrine 
which Christ began to unfold. Now, doctrine is not an 
end but a means to an end, and that is transfigured 
character. This progress of doctrine under two teach¬ 
ers signifies that completed Christianhood lies in the 
dispensation of the Holy Spirit. Says Bernard, “ The 
teaching of the Lord in the Gospels includes the sub¬ 
stance of all Christian doctrine, but does not bear the 
character of finality.” When it reaches its highest 
point it announces itself as unfinished and opens an¬ 
other stage of instruction. In the practical work of 
salvation there is an exact parallel to this progressive 
scheme of doctrine. Christian infancy is prophetic of 
Christian manhood. The movements of still lingering 


SPIRITUAL BABES AND SPIRITUAL MEN. 2 67 

carnality with which the Spirit strives intimate a still 
remaining work when the flesh shall be crucified and 
the Spirit shall be the sole tenant of the purified heart. 
Hence every believer, while highly prizing the attained 
experience preached by Jesus to Nicodemus, should 
move onward beyond the four Gospels into the Acts of 
the Apostles and the glorious Epistles, if he wishes to 
appropriate his full heritage in Christ. The alphabet 
is a necessary beginning of a liberal education, but he 
who lingers in his primer year after year, and never 
enters that rich treasury of literature to which it is the 
key, is no more foolish than the believer who never 
“ ceases to speak of the first principles of Christ,” and 
ever fails to press on unto perfection. 

We are aware of the mysteries involved in this sub¬ 
ject which we cannot explain. We are glad we can¬ 
not; for what man can fully comprehend man may 
have invented. Hence says Robert Hall, “A religion 
without a mystery is like a temple without a god.” 
Yet all must admit that the Holy Spirit is not a vague 
and impersonal abstraction, but a colossal fact in Chris¬ 
tian doctrine and an omnipotent personality in the 
experience of fully advanced believers. There is mys¬ 
tery pertaining to the theology of the Holy Spirit and 
His relation to the Father and the Son. But a faithful 
study of the Gospels and of the Acts clearly demon¬ 
strates that the Son relegated to the Paraclete that com¬ 
pletion of Christian character which it was not His 
mission to accomplish before His ascension. After His 
resurrection He gave a foretaste of this completion 
when He breathed on His disciples and said, “ Receive 


268 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


ye the Holy Ghost.” Nevertheless they were com¬ 
manded to wait for the full measure of the Spirit per¬ 
fecting their character and equipment: “ Tarry ye in 
the city until ye be indued with power from on high.” 
Thus in the new birth there is a capacity for the ful¬ 
ness of the Spirit, and, in all properly instructed believers, 
a presentiment and a prayer for its glorious realization. 
To this prayer there should be added an intelligent, 
persevering and all-surrendering trust in the glorified 
Redeemer. 

We recently heard a preacher declare that the great 
purpose of the incarnation of the Son of God was to 
perfect believers by the plenitude of the Spirit. This 
novel statement does not contradict the Scripture which 
says that He came “ to give his life a ransom for 
many,” for the atonement is only a means to an end, to 
link unhinged humanity with God. The only link long 
enough to reach both and strong enough to hold them 
in blissful and eternal union is the personal Holy Spirit, 
the original bond between God and men before the 
rupture wrought by sin. The bridge swept away by 
that deluge is conditionally restored by the mediatorial 
work of the Son of God. - The condition is unwavering 
faith put forth by a wholly consecrated soul. 

It has been said that doctrine is the skeleton of re¬ 
ligion. If this be true, the backbone of that skeleton 
is the scriptural doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Let every 
believer, by prayerful study of the Holy Scriptures, 
secure for his faith this spinal column. The faith of 
many is weak and flabby because it is invertebrate. 
In nature only the vertebrates have strength and speed 


SPIRITUAL BABES AND SPIRITUAL MEN. 269 

and dominion in their sphere, as the lion and the whale. 
It is so in the spiritual realm. The lions are few, while 
the jellyfishes and sponges are many. Here our par¬ 
allel must end. Things natural have no freedom. A 
backbone may be acquired in the spiritual realm, but 
not in the natural. Hence the immense responsibility 
of every free agent, and his obligation to be conformed 
to the image of the Son by accepting the offer of the 
transforming and conforming Spirit. 

Some one has suggested that “ the lions did not eat 
Daniel because he was all backbone.” 


270 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


THE SPIRIT PRESIDING OVER THE CHURCH. 
LTHOUGH the Holy Spirit dwells only in the 



heart, it is the design of His mission that He 


should preside over one organization. This is 
the Church of Christ as a visible institution. There is 
a spiritual body of which Jesus Christ is the head, 
sometimes called the invisible church, of which we do 
not now speak. The two will never exactly coincide 
so long as fallible men admit and discipline the mem¬ 
bers of the visible Church. Some will be admitted who 
are wolves in sheep’s clothing, and some genuine sheep 
will be outside of any human fold. It always has been 
so, and will continue till the infallible Shepherd shall 
descend and separate this mixed flock to changeless 
destinies. The kingdom of heaven in its visible, 
earthly manifestation “ is like a drag-net that was cast 
into the sea and gathered of every kind ” (Matt. xiii. 
47, Revised Version, margin), the good to be gathered 
into vessels, and the bad to be cast away, “ at the end 
of the world ” or age. 

Yet it is the desire of Christ that His visible Church 
should be holy. For this end the Holy Spirit dwelling 
in holy hearts should preside over the visible organiza¬ 
tion. Saintly members should exercise control. Other¬ 
wise the organization will promote unholiness and not 


THE SPIRIT PRESIDING OVER THE CHURCH. 271 

holiness in its members. The temptation is strong to 
attract men of wealth and social influence. To induce 
them to become members, the standard of spirituality, 
and even of morals, is sometimes lowered. They can 
be retained only by being deferred to and put in author¬ 
ity. Thus the Church becomes worldly. The pulpit 
must please ungodly men, and doctrines promotive of 
a deep spirituality cease to be preached. 

The Church of Christ, forgetting the prohibition, 
“ Love not the world,” has, in some instances, not only 
fallen in love with the world, but has actually married 
the world, and it seems impossible to secure a divorce. 
The protest of the spiritual part of the Church is re¬ 
garded as a disturbance of the peace of captive Zion. 
Yet they must protest, or be silently assimilated to 
baptized worldliness, or withdraw. These are un¬ 
pleasant alternatives. What is the safeguard? A spirit 
of humility and faith which leans on Christ alone for 
success, and esteems the fruit of the Spirit abounding 
in consecrated mechanics as far more ornamental to 
the Church than godless millionaires in the pews ; a 
faith which regards a church composed of day labor¬ 
ers, washerwomen and shop-girls, all filled with the 
Spirit, and, as Father Taylor used to say, “ on speaking 
terms with God,” as stronger and richer in God’s eyes 
than a church of the same number of wealthy and 
fashionable people who are nearer to the world than 
they are to God. There are illustrious examples of 
consecrated wealth. Would that the few were more 
numerous ! The few who get through the needle’s eye 
prove the truth of the declaration of Christ, “ How 


272 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


hardly shall they that have riches enter into the king¬ 
dom of God ! ” 

The presidency of the Holy Spirit in a church, 
through its most spiritual members, is imperilled by 
extravagance in the cost of worship beyond the ability 
of the spiritual worshippers to maintain. This neces¬ 
sitates a deference to rich outsiders, and a resort to 
various worldly devices and forms of social taxation to 
fill up the empty treasury. The beginning of the evil 
is in erecting churches too costly for the members to 
pay for without long slavery to debt, which in many 
instances, alas too many, is a long bondage to worldli¬ 
ness. Unconverted men, because of their long purses, 
are elected as trustees, and schemes of finance for liqui¬ 
dating the debt and paying current expenses are de¬ 
vised which are repugnant to the gospel of Christ, and 
which dethrone the Holy Spirit from His control of the 
church by destroying the spirituality of its members. 
We make no crusade against elegant churches paid for by 
those who love our Lord Jesus with sacrifices cheerfully 
laid on His altar. Christianity is not a declaration of 
war against aesthetics. We do not say, Build as elegant 
and costly churches as you can pay for without coming 
under obligation to worldly men, but we do say, Make 
as large gifts to your local church as you can under the 
presidency of the Holy Spirit, who also has under His 
omniscient eye all the other interests of Christ’s king¬ 
dom on the earth, especially the millions sitting in the 
darkness of paganism, and prompts all enlightened 
Christians to evangelize them. The Holy Spirit in¬ 
spires the missionary spirit, and also general Christian 


THE SPIRIT PRESIDING OVER THE CHURCH. 273 

benevolence, which limit and chasten our indulgence of 
the sense of the beautiful in the adorning of our per¬ 
sons, our homes and our churches. 

It is our belief that, in addition to a Pentecostal bap¬ 
tism, two things are needed to restore the control of the 
Holy Spirit over our churches : first, training in Christian 
beneficence, or systematic giving, on the basis of a 
deeper sense of obligation in the matter of stewardship 
of the Lord’s property. When this has been accom¬ 
plished, the scanty streams of money flowing into the 
Lord’s treasury will have become steadily flowing 
rivers. Then, in the second place, worldly men and 
merely nominal Christians in control of the church must 
be displaced by men and women filled with the Holy 
Spirit. Thousands of churches now leaning on the 
world, imagining themselves too poor to be indepen¬ 
dent of this corrupting influence, will then be surprised 
at their own ability to build commodious churches and 
support worship in a becoming manner. 

We are not pleading for an ideal church. Churches 
governed by the Holy Spirit have existed from the 
beginning and exist now. They are witnessing, grow¬ 
ing, evangelistic and full of the missionary spirit. They 
have escaped the woe predicted by John Wesley when 
warning his societies against spiritual decay, “ Woe be 
unto you when rich men become necessary to you ! ” 
He had in view the spiritual peril of churches too costly 
for the societies. His advice to build plain edifices is 
needed to-day, and always will be so long as there is a 
tendency to trust more in material splendor than in the 
power of God. The Christians of the first century 


274 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

escaped this peril by building no churches. There is 
no account in the New Testament of the dedication of 
a temple of Christian worship. The disciples in the 
days of the apostles met for Christian fellowship in some 
capacious private house. Preaching was probably under 
the open heavens in a genial climate. The rigorous 
winter in many countries precludes this method of 
evangelization. Hence the necessity of buildings. 

We confess a strong sympathy with the Plymouth 
Brethren in their attempt to maintain their worship by 
receiving the gifts of only those who are professedly re¬ 
generate, and refusing the gifts of all others. Their 
worship is chiefly in private houses. Thus they escape 
the evils of a worship too costly for their ability. But 
they are exposed to the danger of constant schism, 
having no outward bond of union in a temple built by 
united gifts and sacrifices. When union ceases, the 
presidency of Him who conserves Christian unity, the 
Holy Spirit, ceases also. No form of church life is 
free from perils. Hence the need of ceaseless watch¬ 
fulness to keep the Paraclete enthroned in the heart 
and in the Church. 

The Holy Spirit will not preside over an organization 
which magnifies external religious forms and rests in 
them. So true is this that the term formalist signifies 
“ one who does not possess the life and spirit of reli¬ 
gion.” The Holy Spirit is free and delights in a variety 
of manifestations in different believers. There should 
be room in every church for this variety. “Where 
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” The con¬ 
verse of this declaration is also true — where liberty is 


THE SPIRIT PRESIDING OVER THE CHURCH. 2/5 

not, there the Spirit does not preside. “ There are di¬ 
versities of operations ” in nature, in Providence, in the 
individual soul, and there must be in the Church if it is 
indwelt by “ the same God which worketh all in all.” 
We believe in the sacraments given for the purpose of 
holding the person of our adorable Saviour forever in 
the centre of Christianity, keeping it from becoming 
a mere system of ethics, after the idea of modern 
liberalism, deism and agnosticism. We also believe 
that they are helps to faith, and, in this way, means of 
grace. But we do not believe that they are the sole 
method of communing with God. It is possible for us 
through faith in Christ to have direct and blissful contact 
of our spirit with the Holy Spirit. This is the central 
and distinctive doctrine of that modern revival of Chris¬ 
tianity called Methodism. The sacraments may be so 
magnified as to obstruct spiritual communion and foster 
an offensive and exclusive sacerdotalism. They were 
never committed to one body of men as a patent right 
to all the offices of the Holy Spirit. 


276 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

DISHONORING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

S the ministry of Christ is divided into three parts, 



the year of obscurity, the year of fame and 


favor, and the year of opposition, so the min¬ 
istry of the Holy Spirit has been marked by great con¬ 
trasts in the estimation of professed Christians. From 
Pentecost till the close of the apostolic age He was 
honored with the presidency of the Church, and was 
everywhere regarded as the heritage of all believers in 
Jesus Christ. Then there came a gradual spiritual de¬ 
cline in which the person and office of the Spirit went 
into an eclipse, at first partial, and at last total. He 
was still regarded as a Person of the Trinity, but one 
who had accomplished His part in the scheme of sal¬ 
vation as a miraculous factor in the establishment of 
Christianity and had retired. The Roman Catholic 
church for fifteen hundred years has in her teachings 
shut up the Holy Ghost in the age of the apostles and 
regarded as fanatic and heretic all who profess to know 
Him as the witness of adoption consciously dwelling 
within them. 

It would spoil sacerdotalism entirely and destroy the 
power of the priests if their benighted people should all 
find out that the gift of the Holy Spirit may be at¬ 
tained directly without the mediation of any man 


DISHONORING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


277 


except the God-Man. Those forms of Protestantism 
which magnify the sacraments as having a saving effi¬ 
cacy in themselves find it extremely difficult to exalt 
the Holy Spirit as the agent of the new birth and the 
conservator of spiritual life. We are told by Hunt in 
his “ History of Religious Thought in England ” that 
some Church of England men believed the Spirit gets no 
nearer to us than the Bible in which He dwells as a 
source of inspiration; others, that He dwells in the holy 
eucharist. Warburton, before the time of Lightfoot 
and Westcott the greatest scholar among the bishops, 
insisted “ that the operations of the Spirit ceased with 
the apostolic age. Without the gift of tongues and 
the power to work miracles, the heathen would 
never have been converted. But when the canon of 
Scripture was complete, the office of the Spirit was in 
part transferred to the rule of faith. To talk of the 
Spirit being now in the world and miraculously chang¬ 
ing men’s hearts is pure fanaticism.” (Hunt, Vol.TII, 
page 279.) This scholar seemed to have no conception 
of the need of the Spirit to convict of sin, to reveal 
Christ to penitent faith, to witness to adoption, to re¬ 
generate and to sanctify. So great and good a man as 
Bishop Butler once said to John Wesley, “ Sir, what do 
you mean by faith?” Wesley replied, “ By justifying 
faith I mean a conviction wrought in a man by the 
Holy Ghost that Christ hath loved him and given Him¬ 
self for him, and that through Christ his sins are for¬ 
given.” The bishop continued : “ Some good men might 
have that kind of faith. Mr. Wesley, I once thought that 
you and Mr. Whitefield were well-meaning men, but I 


2 7 8 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


cannot think so now. Sir, the pretending to extraordi¬ 
nary revelation and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid 
thing, a very horrid thing.” (Hunt, Vol. Ill, page 289.) 

It is surprising that so mighty an intellect as that of 
the author of the immortal “ Analogy ” should fail to dis¬ 
criminate between the gracious operations of the Spirit 
in the believer and His office of inspiration and the ex¬ 
traordinary gifts, or charisms, enumerated in I Cor. xii. 
How appalling must have been the spiritual darkness at 
that time of the mass of Christians both clerical and lay ! 
We who live in a better Christian era have no concep¬ 
tion of the eclipse of faith through which the Church 
of England was then passing while still in the penumbra 
of Romanism. 

But a better era was even then dawning, when the 
Holy Spirit would be recognized and His offices be 
honored by vast bodies of believers in all parts of the 
world. The human instrumentality for the inaugura¬ 
tion of this era was John Wesley, whose torch was 
lighted at the fire burning on the Moravian altar. The 
Lutheran reformation was theological and ecclesiastical, 
the Wesleyan was experimental and spiritual. The 
Spirit, for centuries relegated to the apostolic age, or 
limited to the sacraments “ administered by the priests 
in the mythical apostolic succession,” freed Himself 
from all these fancied limitations and came into imme¬ 
diate, vital, conscious contact with believing souls, and 
there stood up a great and valiant army in the valley of 
dry bones in both England and America. Faith in 
Christ and reliance on His promise of the Paraclete 
afforded the conditions of the Spirit’s manifestation. 


DISHORORING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 279 

The secret of Methodism is conscious salvation through 
the testimony of the Spirit, the finger of God touching 
every penitent who surrenders to God and receives His 
Son as both Saviour and Lord, who expectantly waits 
for the Dove of Peace to bring the olive leaf of divine 
peace and afterwards to bring in perfect purity through 
perfect love shed abroad in the heart. Calvinism in 
modern times has become so modified as to admit that 
the witness of the Spirit and His conscious indwelling 
fulness are the privilege of all believers and not, as 
formerly, the exclusive privilege of a few favored souls, 
the “ electi electorum .” Unmitigated predestinarianism 
requires uncertainty respecting regeneration and for¬ 
giveness as a safeguard to keep the believer from a 
neglect of watchfulness and from that looseness of liv¬ 
ing which would naturally follow the doctrine of uncon¬ 
ditional election combined with the witness of the Spirit 
to our adoption as sons of God. Hence the reign of 
Calvinism of the primitive type has not tended to mag¬ 
nify the Spirit’s office of imparting a knowledge of for¬ 
given sin, while its insistence that the Adamic propen¬ 
sity to sin must continue till the soul is released from 
its earthly tenement is inconsistent with the Spirit’s 
office of entire sanctification. The decay of Calvinism 
favors the restoration of the doctrine of the fulness of 
the Holy Spirit as the heritage of all persevering 
believers. 

There is another hopeful sign of the times very favor¬ 
able to the revival of the doctrine and experience of 
the Pentecostal gift universally enjoyed in the Christian 
Church. I refer to the marked change for the better 


28 o 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


which has recently “taken place in scientific minds. 
These had so long studied matter and its mechanical 
laws, and so long had they moved on the dead level of 
naturalism, that they were strongly inclined to reject all 
the testimonies to conscious movements of the Holy 
Spirit in the heart as the figments of excited imagina¬ 
tions. But since Balfour and Romaine have demon 
strated that there are grounds of certainty in man’s 
moral nature and spiritual aspirations as worthy of con¬ 
fidence as the testimony of the senses and the conclu¬ 
sions of the logical faculty, the arrogance of material¬ 
ism toward Christian experience has been effectually 
rebuked. 

Thus many obstructions to the free course of the 
Spirit have been removed from the path of intelligent 
men and women. What is now needed to complete 
the restoration of the Spirit is that His divine person¬ 
ality and His gracious offices in the redemptive scheme 
should be magnified in the pulpits of Christendom. 
Then will the purified and endowed Church be prepared 
to meet the hosts of Satan, “ terrible as an army with 
banners.” 

These words of the saintly Fletcher in his portrait 
of St. Paul have clung to my memory more than a score 
of years: “ To reject the Son of God manifested in the 
Spirit, as worldly Christians are universally observed to 
do, is a crime of equal magnitude with that of the Jews, 
who rejected Him when manifested in the flesh.” 
i. The Holy Ghost is dishonored when spoken of as a 
thing or an influence, and not as a person. This is 
often done by referring to Him by the use of “it” in- 


DISHONORING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


28 


stead of “ he.” Our authorized version of Rom. viii. 16, 
“The Spirit itself,” has greatly promoted this error. 
The Revision is correct, “The Spirit himself.” Not 
only does it degrade the Spirit to strip Him of His per¬ 
sonality, but it cuts away the ground for that strong 
faith in Him which is requisite to secure His abiding 
presence in us-and the complete work of His offices. 
We cannot trust a thing as we trust a person. In¬ 
distinct and hazy conceptions weaken faith. When 
thought of as a power, a principle, an effluence how¬ 
ever bright, the Holy Spirit is degraded infinitely be¬ 
low a personality implying intelligence, feeling, will, 
freedom and a moral sense. Many true believers in 
Jesus Christ fail to realize the indwelling Spirit because 
their faith in Him is far less definite than their faith in 
Christ. This weak faith is because of nebulous concep¬ 
tions of the Spirit. 

2. He is dishonored when regarded as a created 
person. Some admit His personality, but deny His 
divinity equal to the Father and the Son in power and 
glory. In so doing they divest themselves of the 
ground of the strongest possible faith in the Spirit. 
The proofs of His divinity are found in texts which 
ascribe to Him divine attributes, divine acts, divine 
titles, and associate Him on implied terms of equality 
with the Father and the Son, as in the formula for 
Christian baptism, Matt, xxviii. 19, and the apostolic 
benediction, II. Cor. xiii. 14. 

3. The Spirit is dishonored when anything is sub¬ 
stituted for His offices in the inspiration of spiritual life 
and the development of Christian character, such as a 


282 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


germ of natural goodness instead of the new birth, edu¬ 
cation instead of sanctification, culture of the aesthetic 
tastes instead of the fruit of the Spirit, roundabout in¬ 
ferences that we are saved, neglecting and undervaluing 
the direct witness of the Spirit “ crying in the heart 
Abba, Father,” the pleasures of sense instead of the joy 
of the Holy Ghost, the honor of men rather than the 
approval of God. We have already alluded to the dis¬ 
respect of the Spirit when His witness to adoption is 
slighted. This is so important that it needs further 
emphasis. The Spirit is really, though it may be unin¬ 
tentionally, dishonored when His office of witness to 
the adoption of the penitent believer is dropped out of 
the sermon and out of the instruction of seekers at the 
altar. When the office is slighted the officer is dispar¬ 
aged. When the sinner becomes a new creature it is 
not by a natural process of evolution, or of develop¬ 
ment from a germ of goodness, but by the will and 
work of the new-Creator. When it is said that a man 
may regenerate himself by assuming an obedient atti¬ 
tude of his will toward Christ as both Saviour and 
Lord, disrespect is shown to the sole author of the 
new birth. It is true that men have the gracious ability 
to convert themselves in the literal meaning of that 
verb, that is, to turn about, to forsake sin, and in peni¬ 
tent faith to look unto God. This is conversion, a 
graciously assisted human act. But regeneration is the 
sole work of the Spirit when the term is used in its 
theological sense. In the same way the Spirit is slighted 
when His office as God’s messenger to announce the 
soul’s adoption is ignored and something else is put in 


DISHONORING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 283 

His place. The modern substitute is the Word, the 
Holy Scriptures. Written many centuries ago, they 
cannot certify my sonship to God by adoption. The 
Bible nowhere teaches that itself is the ground of per¬ 
sonal assurance. It distinctly reveals the fact that the 
Holy Spirit is the direct witness to this all-important 
event on which eternal destiny hangs. “ Because ye 
are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into 
your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” The phrase “ into 
your hearts,” instead of “ into the Bible,” denotes a 
direct, personal certification of adoption. In addition 
to this, there are found in the Bible, inspired by the 
Spirit, the marks of the new birth, the fruit of the 
Spirit. When these are discovered, they constitute an 
inferential testimony confirming the direct witness of 
the Spirit. But when the Word is put in the first 
place, as the ground of assurance, and the Spirit is 
omitted, or put in the second place, He is dishonored. 
There is a numerous school of evangelists who are thus 
constantly ignoring the Holy Ghost in all their teaching 
of assurance. It is a great error. It leaves the seeker 
without that satisfactory certification of sonship to God 
which He in His goodness has provided. “ The Spirit 
himself beareth witness [direct testimony] with our 
spirit [inferential testimony] that we are the children 
of God.” 

This direct contact of the Spirit is elsewhere taught 
under the imagery of “ the earnest,” or money paid to 
bind the bargain, and “ sealing,” since the seal authenti¬ 
cates, assures and appropriates. The Holy Spirit in 
the believer’s heart is the Father’s seal. Let all re- 


284 the gospel of TPIE COMFORTER. 

ligious teachers honor this seal. To dishonor it is to 
encourage a multitude of professed disciples of Christ 
to go into eternity with invalid title-deeds to eternal 
life, with no possibility of rectifying the fatal mistake. 

4. Ministers of the gospel and :;thcr Christian 
workers dishonor the Spirit when they more earnestly 
desire His gifts than Himself; when they are more 
eager to be clothed with His power than to be filled 
with His presence; when they prefer popularity to 
purity; when they rely more on polished rhetoric than 
on the power of the Holy Ghost; when they arc morv. 
concerned about preparing the sermon than then; Ives ; 
when they are more ambitious to please the Church 
than the Head of the Church; when they subordinate 
the ministry of the Lord Jesus to themselves and not to 
the Lord Jesus; when they use the sacred office as a 
ladder to personal fame or gain, instead of a stairway 
up which they may lead repenting sinners to the bosom 
of God. The Holy Ghost scrutinizes motives. He 
searches not only the deep things of God, but also the 
depths of man’s heart, and He feels aggrieved when He 
is outranked in man’s esteem by anything beneath the 
sun, yea, beneath the throne of the ascended Son of 
God and Redeemer of men, whom it is His mission to 
glorify on earth. Hence the Holy Spirit is dishonored 
whenever Christ is not exalted as the only Saviour of 
lost men; when He is displaced in the pulpit by some 
fad or fancy of momentary interest; when Jesus Christ 
crucified is regarded as a less attractive Saturday pulpit 
bulletin than the last international yacht lace, cr a pane¬ 
gyric on the last humoristic poet of liberates*! 


DISHONORING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


5. Disrespect is snown to the Holy Spirit when the 
Bible He has inspired is neglected, and religious books 
and periodicals illustrating, explaining and defending 
the Book of books find little sale and less attention, 
while secular and fictitious literature is read with great 
avidity. It grieves the Spirit to see myriads of people 
bearing the name of Christ feeding on the chaff of irre¬ 
ligious reading and crying, “Oh ! my leanness ! ” or de¬ 
vouring the poison of the satanic press and going down 
to a speedy spiritual death as moral suicides, because 
of the virus of a baneful literature voluntarily poured 
into their arteries. “ As he thinketh in his heart, so is 
he.” But since a man thinks as he largely supplies 
materials for thought by reading, it is true that as he 
readeth good or bad books, so is he. 

6. When the Holy Spirit moves holy men to write 
saving truth for the spiritual healing of the nations 
throughout all generations, and bad men develop a 
satanic ingenuity in assailing this precious record and 
in destroying the faith of men in that religion which 
transforms sinners to saints here and reveals life eter¬ 
nal hereafter, the Spirit of inspiration is not only 
grieved but is deeply disgraced. It is like some bane¬ 
ful genius destroying in some dark and stormy night 
all faith in the mariner’s compass and causing all the 
ships, with all their crews and passengers, in all the 
oceans of the world, henceforth to sail in painful un¬ 
certainty, and many of them to drift into ruin. It is one 
thing to dig down to the foundations of a citadel in 
order to show their strength, but it is quite another 
thing to explode a hundred pounds of dynamite be- 


286 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


neath them. There is in our times a class of higher 
critics who are studious to conserve all the truth that 
the Holy Spirit has inspired. With such He is well 
pleased. His honor is safe in their keeping. There is 
a class of destructives who are madly attempting to 
sweep out of the universe every vestige of a supernat¬ 
ural revelation, and to beat down to the dead level of 
naturalism every religious truth that stands a foot above 
that level. The personal Holy Spirit, whose mission it 
is to conserve and apply saving truth, cannot look upon 
this attempt with indifference. It dishonors Him to 
assault His work. In our day this assault is quite in¬ 
directly made by some. They are attempting to bring 
Christianity to this level, not by beating it down, but 
by lifting all pagan religions up. They admit the in¬ 
spiration of Isaiah and Paul, but they assert that Plato 
and Shakespeare are just as much divinely inspired. 
We have heard one of the champions of “ liberal Chris¬ 
tianity ” read in his Boston pulpit from Job, Plato, 
Seneca, Cato, and T. Starr King, and then say, “ Thus 
endeth the reading of the Scriptures.” 

The robber in the Arabian Nights put a chalk mark 
on a house which contained treasure, intending to rob 
it in the night. Morgiana chalked all the other houses 
in the same way, and thus defeated the robber’s pur¬ 
pose. One book contains the treasure of heavenly 
truth for the enrichment of mankind. That they may 
easily find it, God has put the mark of inspiration upon 
it. Liberalism is trying to defeat His benevolent pur¬ 
pose by putting a similar mark on all the religious books 
of the heathen and all the works of genius. The 


DISHONORING THE HOLV SPIRIT. 287 

scheme may so far succeed as to mislead and bewilder 
thousands of souls and turn their feet away from the 
path to eternal life. Such an act is doing despite to 
the Spirit of grace. 

7. The divine Spirit is dishonored by the unholy 
lives of those who profess to be regenerated by Him. 
The Christian professes to be a sample of the new cre¬ 
ation. A defective sample discredits its maker. Thus 
the unworthy life of a man who by profession writes 
the name of the holy Christ across his forehead for all 
the world to read brings reproach not only on those 
who labored and prayed for his salvation, and on the 
church with which he is united, but also on the Holy 
Spirit, the Lord and giver of life and the new-creator of 
souls. Still greater is the dishonor to the Spirit where 
one professing to be filled with the Spirit, and to be 
entirely sanctified by His indwelling, is ’ living an un¬ 
worthy life. The more valuable the coin the baser is 
the counterfeit. A Christian may become a false pro¬ 
fessor in two ways — by an untruthful original profes¬ 
sion, and by retrogression from a true profession. In 
either case the Spirit is dishonored. But I speak more 
especially of the latter. “ How is the gold become 
dim ! How is the most fine gold changed ! ” 

Our words may not only dishonor, but distress the 
Holy Spirit. From Eph. iv. 29, 30, “Let no corrupt 
speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good 
for edifying. . . . And grieve not the Holy Spirit of 
God,” we learn that “worthless” (Meyer), “profit¬ 
less and unedifying, not necessarily filthy ” (Ellicott 
and Alford) talk is here indicated as painful to the 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

divine Spirit, vile talk being prohibited in v. 4. 
Empty and trifling discourses, low wit and nonsense, 
are so opposed to the holy nature and work of the 
Holy Spirit, who dwells in Christians, that He cannot 
fail to be grieved thereat. “ The chosen expression 
‘ Holy Spirit of God,’ renders the enormity of such 
action most palpable/’ (Meyer.) “ The Christian walk¬ 
ing in sincerity utters not only no wicked, but even no 
useless words.” (Olshausen.) This does not exclude 
animated, instructive and cheerful discourse, enlivened 
by flashes of delicate and dignified wit, but it does 
mark with the disapprobation of the Holy Spirit the 
jester, the punster and studied humorist, whose chief 
end and aim in human society is smartness, facetious¬ 
ness and drollery. 

The universe is rational, and its Creator is rational, 
and the Holy Spirit, the divine Person through whom 
He acts on man as a reprover, and in the believer as 
the sanctifier, is also rational. He can never be pleased 
with anything irrational, unreal and farcical. Jesus 
Christ, whom the Spirit represents, took a view of hu¬ 
man life and destiny too realistic to admit of those dis¬ 
tortions of the truth which are implied in jokes and 
witticisms. If it is the office of the Spirit to bring us 
into conformity with the image of the Son of God in 
moral character, shall we not be assimilated to His 
sobriety and gravity also? Will not the Spirit chasten 
and elevate the imagination and make it the vehicle of 
truth and the instrument of instruction? Will He not 
in this way sanctify the fine arts and make painting and 
sculpture, poetry and music, rhetoric and oratory chan- 


Dishonoring The holy spirit. 289 

nels of grace to the believing heart? Is it not the mis¬ 
sion of the Spirit to harmonize and unify all our facul¬ 
ties so that the aesthetical and the ethical shall both 
minister to our complete spiritual development? If 
an affirmative answer is correct, it follows that so much 
of pleasantry and wit as is needful for human society 
at its climax the Holy Spirit will sanctify, and all that 
tends to degrade He will eliminate. Humor without 
the savor of godliness always tends downward, chang¬ 
ing the sublime into the ridiculous, and turning the 
sacred into the profane. It may be thought that in 
the form of ridicule it is necessary to castigate folly 
and refute error. But Jesus Christ, the model religious 
teacher, did not use .it in denouncing the hypocrisies 
of the Pharisees and in establishing His gospel. Elijah 
made use of ridicule against the priests of Baal, as did 
Paul against Christian teachers insisting on circumcision. 
“ I would they would even mutilate themselves” (Gal. 
v. 12, Revised Version, margin). But it is a dangerous 
weapon of the nature of a boomerang. 

8. Next to disrespect shown to the Holy Spirit is 
disparagement of His work. Almost identical are an 
author and his book, a mechanic and the product of 
his skill. Ridicule of the work is derision of the work¬ 
man. This truth underlies that weighty and alarming 
utterance of Jesus Christ, “ Whosoever shall be ashamed 
of me and my words, in this adulterous and sinful gen¬ 
eration, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, 
when he cometh in the glory of his Father, with the 
holy angels.” The lifeblood of Jesus pulsates in His 
words, for He says, “ The words that I speak unto you, 


290 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

they are spirit and they are life.” It was the work of 
the Son to take His Father’s words on one side of the 
veil, and reveal them unto men on the other side. 
Hence contempt for the revelation is mockery of the 
Revealer. 

Moreover, it is true that the more excellent the work 
in the estimation of the worker, the more keenly does 
he feel dishonored when it is disparaged. A con¬ 
demned masterpiece is the climax of mortification. 

What work on the earth is the masterpiece of the 
Holy Spirit? Is it not the completed holiness of a soul 
born with a propensity to sin ? We infer this from the 
adjective “ holy,” which is a part of the name Holy 
Ghost. He is thus called, not because this adjective 
distinguishes His nature from that of the Father and the 
Son, but because it designates His office to impart and to 
create and conserve holiness. It is true that believers 
are provisionally “ sanctified in Christ Jesus,” just as 
all men are provisionally saved in His atonement. But 
men are really saved only when through their faith in 
Christ they are born of the Spirit, and believers are 
wholly sanctified only when they appropriate this work 
of the Holy Spirit as the completion of the new-crea- 
tion of the soul. This is the climax of His activity on 
the earth. He is the finger of God when He causes us 
“ to know the exceeding greatness of his power to 
usward who believe.” 

Therefore it follows that the sin that borders upon 
the irremissible sin, the blasphemy against the Holy 
Ghost, is the irreverent and contemptuous criticism of 
His work in the entire sanctification of an immortal soul. 


DISHONORING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


291 


This is a sin to which every generation of Christians is 
exposed, but more especially that body of believers 
which is beginning to lean upon the world and to let 
down its standard of truth in order to court its favop. 
Then he who would magnify the dispensation of the 
Holy Ghost, by attesting His power to perfect holiness 
in the believer, may expect to endure disparaging and 
captious criticisms which really reflect on the divine 
author. This is a serious matter. Of the three Per¬ 
sons in the one divine nature, the Holy Spirit is the 
most sensitive to slights and insults. 

Should it be said that the holiest person you have ever 
met had faults, and was therefore a just object of criti¬ 
cism, we reply that many imperfections in taste, judg¬ 
ment and outward appearance may be consistent with 
perfect purity of heart. 

The only perfect man since Adam was created did 
not escape the contempt of men. 

In the classroom of President Wayland, many years 
ago, a student arose and put the following question: 
“ Dr. Wayland, don’t you think, if Christian people 
were more amiable, kind, lovely in their dispositions 
and in their intercourse with the world, if they presented 
Christianity in its true aspects, don’t you think every¬ 
body would be so attracted and charmed as to embrace 
Christianity at once? ” Dr. Wayland, assuming an air 
more deliberate and earnest than usual, replied in sub¬ 
stance : “ There was once on earth one who combined in 
perfect symmetry all the graces of Christian character; 
one who was wise, kind, unselfish, lovely, without fault, 
absolutely perfect; and what was the result of this ex- 


292 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

hibition of character in the world? They cried, Crucify 
him! crucify him! ” * 

Says Archdeacon Hare: “ But the Comforter was 
to abide with Christ’s Church forever. Hence it has 
been repeatedly seen that when He was forgotten 
and His abiding presence and influence were almost 
denied by those who occupied the chief places in 
the outward Church, He has manifested Himself to 
others, who, as of old, have been mocked, and said 
to have been full of new wine , nay, have been per¬ 
secuted, and even cast out from the outward com¬ 
munion of the Church. This, which had happened 
before, happened again the last century. The men 
who were awakened to a deeper consciousness that 
there can be no Christian life in the soul except 
through the operation of the Spirit, were, some of them, 
led or driven to secede from our [Anglican] Church, 
while others had to endure reproach and scorn within 
it. On the other hand, the dominant prosaic rational¬ 
ism laid down that all manner of enthusiasm must needs 
be foolish and mischievous. One of our bishops wrote 
a book against enthusiasm, as a quality fit only for 
Papists and Methodists, evincing no sympathy with the 
deep feelings and wants which were venting themselves 
even in their most offensive absurdities; no insight into 
the manifold causes which helped to delude them; no 
desire to separate the wheat and preserve it from the 
conflagration of the tares; and no recognition of that 
which was holy and just and true in their zeal, their 
energy and their devotion. Folly and fraud were the 


* See Appendix, Note I. 


DISHONORING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


293 


author’s summary sentence; and with these two words, 
blind as the hangman’s rope, he strung together the 
puppets of straw that he called by the names of Wesley 
and Whitefield and Zinzendorf, along with others under 
the denomination of St. Anthony, St. Francis, St. Igna¬ 
tius and St. Teresa.” 


294 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE FULNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 

I T is sometimes said that Christ’s new commandment, 
“ Love one another,” is the eleventh command¬ 
ment. In the same way we have the twelfth in 
Paul’s mandatory precept, “Be filled with the Spirit” 
(Eph. v. 18). There is an error quite widely spread in 
the Church, that the baptism or fulness of the Spirit is 
not universally obligatory, but rather that it is an elec¬ 
tive experience, a privilege and not an imperative duty. 
We note that the passive voice, “be filled,” implies that 
we cannot actively fill ourselves, but that the Spirit is 
present like the atmosphere and ready instantly to fill 
every vacuum. It is ours to create a vacuum by an 
unreserved self-surrender to Christ as both Saviour and 
Lord. This implies strong faith. In truth, faith is 
man’s only capacity to receive God. He cannot enter 
us through the senses, for they report only material 
things; nor can the Spirit enter the soul through the 
reason, which apprehends only relations, not realities. 
Therefore faith is the only door by which the Spirit 
comes into the human spirit. Man, a spirit, is an 
image of God the Spirit. The creature is made for the 
occupancy of the Creator, and he finds his highest joy 
only when as a temple he is “the habitation of God 
through the Spirit.” 

It is quite evident that purity is a prerequisite to 
this indwelling fulness of the Spirit. This is the 


THE FULNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 


295 


divine order: first cleansed, then filled. All filling 
presupposes emptying. It is true that the baptism of 
the Spirit has been sought and received as a full endow¬ 
ment for service. But a careful examination of such 
experiences reveals the fact of the Spirit’s revelation of 
an inward bias to moral evil, and also of the seeker’s 
full consent to its extermination by the purifying fire of 
the Spirit before He takes up His abode within. This 
consent is a part of his irreversible and all-embracing 
self-surrender to Christ, the great Physician, whose 
healing power is preparatory to the full endowment 
with the Holy Spirit.* 

Turning to our Greek Testament we note that the 
command “Be filled with the Spirit ” is in the present 
tense, denoting not a mechanical fulness once for all, 
but a vital fulness, a constant appropriation and a 
perpetual reception, a ceaseless drinking and a cease¬ 
less thirst. Hence the paradox of Charles Wesley: 

“ Insatiate to this spring I fly; 

I drink, and yet am ever dry.” 

The thirst is for more of the same kind, not for any¬ 
thing different, like the thirst of a perfectly healthy 
babe. “ But the water that I shall give him shall be in 
him a well [artesian] of water springing up into ever¬ 
lasting life.” The need of an increase of this water is 
not excluded. Says Calvin: “The Holy Spirit is a 
gushing fountain ever flowing, so that they who have 
been renewed by spiritual grace are in no danger of 
becoming completely dry,” so far as the supply is con¬ 
cerned. There is danger of a diminishing appropria¬ 
tion till the soul has ceased to drink. Says Bengel, 
“Truly that water, as far as it depends on itself, has in 

* See Appendix, Note K. 


2 g 6 THE GOSPEL OE THE COMFORTER. 

it an everlasting virtue ; and when thirst returns the 
defect is on the part of the man, not of the water.” 

“We may insensibly and without raising the suspi¬ 
cion of our Christian friends lose the life of the Spirit, 
and preserve at the same time deceitful appearances. 
For when the Holy Spirit withdraws from the soul He 
sometimes allows the forms which He has created to 
remain. The oil is exhausted, but the lamp is there; 
prayer is offered and the Bible read ; the going to church 
is not given up, and, to a certain degree, the service is 
enjoyed; in a word, religious habits are preserved, and, 
like the corpses found at Pompeii, which were in a per¬ 
fect state of preservation and in the very position in 
which death had surprised them, but which were reduced 
to ashes by contact with the air, so the blast of trial, of 
temptation or that of the final judgment will also de¬ 
stroy those spiritual corpses.” (Tophel.) 

There is a fulness of the Spirit of the emotional kind 
which is liable to great fluctuations. It is genuine but 
not deep. It does not have permanent and staying 
qualities. It is often received amid the tidal wave of 
the faith and sympathy of a multitude, and begins to de¬ 
cline when the social magnetism is dispelled by separa¬ 
tion from the jubilant throng in the temple or camp. 
The Spirit seems to pervade only the upper and more 
easily reached currents of the soul; the depths of the 
being, the inner life where the will dwells and character 
has its roots, have not been reached. Their experience 
is like what Fletcher calls “ a land flood,” a spring 
freshet, and not a river steadily flowing from springs so 
deep as not to be affected by summer’s drought and 
winter’s cold. Corresponding to the stony-ground con¬ 
verts to Christ, who receive with joy the word into the 


the Fulness of the spirit. 29; 

shallow soil and immediately send up a flush of green 
which as quickly withers away, is a class of Pentecostal 
professors whose uneven ecstatic experiences are a 
stumblingblock to many Christians and a great hin¬ 
drance to the experimental reception by the mass of be¬ 
lievers of the most precious truths of the gospel, espe¬ 
cially the promise of the Father and of the Son, the gift 
of the Comforter. Whenever He is deliberately re¬ 
ceived in the fulness of His offices and the permanence 
of His indwelling, men of power are raised up, and 
anointed women go forth to successful labor in the har¬ 
vest fields of the world. 

Many a professed Christian now a cipher in influence 
would become mighty in advancing the kingdom of 
Christ if he were filled with the Pentecostal gift. “ The 
apostles were good men before the baptism of the Pente¬ 
cost. But how dull of apprehension were they though 
they listened to the instructions, not of a prophet who 
was of the earth, therefore earthly and speaking from the 
earth, but of Him who was from heaven and above all, 
and who spake the very words of God. How little 
they saw the glory or felt the power of the truth they 
heard! Yet they knew more, believed more, loved 
more than all the rest of mankind. They possessed 
truth which flesh and blood had not revealed unto them, 
but the Father in heaven. ‘I am the way, and the 
truth, and the life.’ But when the Holy Ghost fell on 
them what a glorious transformation ! It was as if 
meridian day had burst upon them from the obscurity 
of an eclipse. As with tongues of fire they spoke forth 
the wonders which, though they knew them before, they 
till now had not known. God had passed before them 
and proclaimed His name, shown them His glory. The 


29B 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Spirit had taken the all-glorious beams that blaze from 
the face of Christ and had carried them deep into their 
hearts. The chambers of their inner being had become 
all luminous, and every ray of light there glowed with 
a dissolving, melting warmth. The fountains of the 
great .deep of their sensibilities were broken up, and 
floods of happy tears were shed over a thousand remem¬ 
brances of their beloved Lord. His instructions, His 
miracles, His holiness, His love, His majesty, His suf¬ 
ferings, His resurrection, His seat at His Father’s right 
hand, His whole manifestation and work stood before 
them in a new and resplendent light and bathed in 
glory.” (John Morgan, D. D.) 


THE UNCLAIMED DEPOSIT. 


299 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


THE UNCLAIMED DEPOSIT. 



HE Scottish bankers have recently reported that 


the unclaimed deposits in their banks amount to 


forty million pounds, equal to nearly two hun¬ 
dred million dollars. For several generations de¬ 
positors have suddenly died, and their bank books have 
been lost through casualties on the sea or land, and 
their kindred are ignorant of the treasures rightly 
theirs. Many of them are doubtless in great need 
through what Socrates called “ myriad poverty/’ and 
are fighting desperately to keep the wolf from the door. 
If some philanthropist should get the names of these 
lost depositors and search out the legal heirs to these 
millions of money and persuade them to enforce their 
claims, he would be a benefactor indeed, worthy of a 
marble or bronze statue erected by their willing hands. 

This suggests the vastness of the spiritual deposits 
made by our Elder Brother, Jesus Christ, awaiting 
every child of God when he presents and proves his 
claim. Many of them are spiritual starvelings in hunger 
and distress, going about in rags, crying, “ Oh! my 
leanness, my leanness! ” when they might be feasting 
in a palace, clothed in white linen, each having a purse 
well filled with “gold tried in the fire.” For Jesus 
Christ became poor that we who believe in Him might 
become rich. President Wayland, in his “Political 
Economy,” defines riches as the abundant means for 


306 THE GOSTEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

gratifying desire. Man’s deepest desires are rooted in 
his spiritual nature. He desires unfailing happiness. 
This in the presence of a holy God must come from 
likeness to Him, so that we perfectly love what He 
loves and perfectly hate what He hates. This likeness 
dwells only in the sphere of love filling the soul to the 
very brim, that perfect love which casteth out fear. 
The origin of this love is not a fountain in the low¬ 
lands of nature; it is supernatural ; it is a stream pour¬ 
ing down from the uplands of heaven. 

“The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by 
the Holy Spirit given unto us.” Therefore the gift of 
the Holy Spirit Himself abiding in the believer is the 
true riches, the source of supreme felicity, wherever He 
is received as the indwelling Comforter. This gift is 
on deposit for every believer. But many do not claim 
this heritage of blessing, and others have not really 
heard the good news of the great deposit in their name. 
For there are many spiritual babes in God’s family to 
whom, as they emerge from their minority, we must 
unfold their wealth of Christian privilege. For the 
gift of the abiding Paraclete is to those only who already 
love our Lord Jesus Christ and prove it by obedience 
(John xiv. 15, 16). Even to such persons this gift 
does not come as a matter of course. He comes only 
to those who so earnestly desire His presence as 
definitely to ask, and to persevere in asking, till they 
consciously receive this divine Person. Hence much 
of gospel preaching has for its proper object the 
incitement to seek this greatest gift which God can 
now send or believers receive. If the pulpit theme is 
prayer, there can be no real prayer unless the in¬ 
dwelling Spirit Himself “ makes intercession for us.” 


THE UNCLAIMED DEPOSIT. 


301 


For He is “the Spirit of grace and supplication.” If 
the subject of the sermon is singing as a part of Chris¬ 
tian worship, the argument is incomplete without the 
exhortation to “sing in the Spirit.” Does the Christian 
aspire to real freedom ? He will find that where the 
Spirit-of the Lord is, there, and there only in the wide 
universe, is real liberty. If the believer is weak, the 
faithful preacher will say that the only way for him to 
be strengthened with might is “by the Spirit in the 
inner man.” If the preacher divulges the secret of 
true happiness, he will speak of “joy in the Holy 
Ghost.” If the doubting soul needs assurance of son- 
ship to God, the only voice which truly cries “Abba, 
Father,” in believing hearts is that of “the Spirit of 
his Son.” Without the cry of the living Spirit within, 
the written word is not a sufficient ground of assurance. 
Would you know where God’s temple is? “Know ye 
not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit 
of God dwelleth in you ? ” Would you have the whole 
galaxy of Christian virtues adorning your character ? 
The Holy Spirit is the divine decorator, supplying 
“love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
faith, meekness, temperance.” If the believer, conscious 
of sonship to God, is wrestling with inward hereditary 
evil, that propensity to sin which theologians call origi¬ 
nal sin, and is desirous of deliverance and of a full 
preparation for life everlasting, let him seek perfect 
cleansing in the only way it can be found, “ through 
sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” 
Would he have an inward revelation of the Son of God 
in all His loveliness, such as Paul had, let him study 
Christ’s words respecting “another Comforter:” “He 
shall glorify me ; for he shall take of mine, and show it 


302 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


unto you; ” not to your bodily eyes, but to your spirit¬ 
ual perception, thus fulfilling the promise made by 
Jesus,- not only to His twelve apostles and the disciples 
who heard His words, but also to every believer through 
all the coming generations, “ I will manifest myself unto 
him.” 

We have thus described this treasure on deposit for 
you, my Christian reader, with a definite purpose. Is 
it up to this hour, in your case, an unclaimed deposit ? 
If it is, it may be because you have greatly underval¬ 
ued it under some misconception of its transcendent 
excellence. Divest yourself of unworthy prejudice ; lay 
aside the error which blinds you to the glory of the 
gospel of the Comforter. Ask God to help you to study 
“the promise of the Father” with anointed eyes and a 
heart open skyward. Then will spiritual hunger, which 
is itself one of the beatitudes, be awakened, and faith to 
appropriate your now claimed deposit will spring up in 
your aspiring soul. 

But if the study of the Holy Scriptures does not over¬ 
come your spiritual inertia and banish the prejudice 
which may be eclipsing this subject, listen to the testi¬ 
mony of those who have been to God’s bank and in the 
name of Jesus Christ have boldly claimed this their 
deposit. Testimony is the prime thing in our courts 
and in all trade, social intercourse and medical science. 
It has its place in Christianity. “ With the heart man 
believeth, and with the mouth confession is made unto 
salvation,” both initial and complete. Listen, therefore, 
with candor to the testimony of victorious souls, and 
you will find by what they conquered. You will con¬ 
quer by the same sign. In the same field where they 
sought and found a treasure which makes them spirit- 


THE UNCLAIMED DEPOSIT. 


303 


ual millionaires there is .a lot reserved for your pickaxe 
and spade. Dig and become rich. A pauper in grace 
reflects little credit upon the Saviour who “ is able to 
do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, 
according to the power that worketh in us, unto him 
be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all 
ages, world without end. Amen.” 


304 THE gospel of the comforter. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

RIVERS OF LIVING WATER. 

I T is very rarely that we find a saying of Jesus Christ, 
the great teacher, with an apostolic note subjoined. 
This unique combination is one of the priceless 
jewels in John’s Gospel (vii. 37-39). Christ was at the 
feast of tabernacles. “ At every day of the feast, at 
the time of the morning sacrifice, a priest brought into 
the forecourt, in a golden vessel, water from the spring 
of Siloah, which rises within the mount on which , the 
temple stood, and poured it, mingled with sacrificial 
wine, into two bowls which stood upon the altar and in 
which there was an opening by which it made its 
escape.” Meanwhile the priests sounded trumpets and 
clashed cymbals, and the words of Isa. xii. 3 were 
chanted, “With joy shall we draw water out of the wells 
of salvation.” Just when the people were exhibiting 
great joy at the sight of this symbol Jesus stood forth 
and with a loud voice cried out to the vast multitude : 
“ If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 
He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out 
of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Upon 
this John thus comments: “But this spake he of the 
Spirit, which they that believe in him should receive : 
for the Holy Ghost was not yet given ; because that 
Jesus was not yet glorified.” This explains why Jesus 
used the future tense, “ rivers of living waters shall 


RIVERS OF LIVING WATER. 305 

flow.” The ceaseless Pentecostal fountain was yet to 
be opened for earth’s thirsty millions. 

It is commonly thought that when Jesus uttered the 
words, “ Come unto me, and drink,” He meant but one 
act — believe on me ; that is, to come is to believe, and 
to drink is to believe. But there is a beautiful shade of 
difference. Christ used no tautology. To come to a 
fountain does not quench thirst. This represents the 
direct act of saving faith, not satisfying, but painful 
from the strenuous effort. But drinking is a fit emblem 
of the reflex spontaneity of assuring faith grounded in 
the Spirit’s inward cry, “ Abba, Father.” This is not a 
single effort, as saving faith is, but a continuous and 
joyful appropriation. We come to the fountain once; 
we drink alw, vs and without conscious volition. The 
first act is saving faith, the second act, or series of acts, 
is the faith of assurance. In fact, the water will once 
for all be received into the inner nature, will be imma¬ 
nent in the believer, and will attend him in every stage 
of his being, even to eternity — “a well of water spring¬ 
ing up unto eternal life.” Says Tholuck, “This eter¬ 
nally upspringing water expresses that death not only 
does not interrupt this life , this communion with God, 
but that it rather brings it to perfection.” 

In John iv. 14, Jesus declared His gift of water would 
be a self-dependent spring within the heart; but at the 
feast of tabernacles He went far beyond that in saying 
that the inner fountain should pour forth, not brooks, 
but rivers, Amazons, abundantly quenching our thirst 
and refreshing others. This interpretation avoids the 
error that one Christian can impart the Holy Spirit to 
another. He may by his testimony and conduct 
awaken thirst in his neighbor and lead him to the 


3 06 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

spring where he may himself drink. One may be a 
channel for the water of life to flow to another. 

The conditions on which the living water, the Holy 
Comforter, is given are clearly set forth in John xiv. 14-16, 
the last address of Christ before His crucifixion. It 
has been very appropriately called “the heart of Jesus.” 
The conditions are love to Christ evinced by obedience 
to His commandments and asking in His name. The 
Paraclete is the greatest mediatorial gift. The words 
“in my name,” as the condition of prevailing prayer, 
distinctly reveal the mediatorial office of the Son of 
God in the establishment of His Father’s kingdom. 
No man can wilfully ignore the Mediator and then 
prevail in his prayer to God for the gift of the Com¬ 
forter. Hence many fail to receive the well of water, 
the Pentecostal gift; some because their theology is so 
meagre that it affords in the unity of the divine nature 
no place for the Mediator, and others because He is 
rather a name, an orthodox formula, than a living per¬ 
son in whom they trust with a faith equal to that exercised 
toward the heavenly Father. Such equal reliance the 
Son claims when He says, “Believe in God, and be¬ 
lieve in me.” Before He finished the discourse which 
opens with these words He completed the prayer taught 
to His disciples at the beginning of His ministry by 
adding “in my name.” It is this completed prayer, 
offered in faith by a soul filled with ardent desire, which 
opens wide the portals for the incoming of the Com¬ 
forter, and unseals the fountain henceforth eternally 
springing up in the hidden depths of the believing 
soul. 

Many excellent Christians fail to receive the fulness 
of the Spirit because, like the woman at Jacob’s well, 


RIVERS OF LIVING WATER. 


307 


they do not know the gift, or rather, as Campbell trans¬ 
lates it, “ the bounty, the liberality of God,” that dis¬ 
position of mind from which the best gifts flow. “ If 
thou knewest, thou wouldest have asked.” Our asking 
is limited by our knowledge. Ignorance of God’s large¬ 
heartedness asks only small favors. Hence a better 
knowledge of God is requisite for spiritual enlargement. 
There must be a more thorough acquaintance with His 
character as revealed in His word and in the testimony 
of those who are dwelling in the higher altitudes of 
grace. Knowledge excites desire. The merchant who 
artistically arranges his goods in his windows acts upon 
this principle. To awaken a spiritual appetite God sets 
forth in revelation His showcase of exceedingly great 
and precious promises. In this display of priceless 
jewels is the Kohinoor diamond of the Holy Scriptures, 
“the promise of the Fatherf towering above all the 
other promises as indeed “a mountain of light,” an 
ornament for the crown of every “ king and priest unto 
God,” who claims his full heritage in Christ. 

Jesus said to the woman, “If thou hadst asked, I 
would have given,” showing as invariable an order of 
sequences in the spiritual realm as in the material 
world. He answers all true prayer that reaches His 
ear, and is waiting for more. To bestow the Comforter 
is His highest delight. He is more willing to give the 
Holy Spirit “ to them that ask him ” than earthly parents 
are to give good gifts unto their children.* 

* See Appendix, Note L. 


3o8 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE EXTRAORDINARY GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT. 

I N the Old Testament we read of extraordinary gifts 
of the Spirit entirely different from the graces of 
the Spirit. Bezaleel was endowed by the Spirit of 
God “ to devise cunning works in gold and in silver and 
in brass ” for beautifying the tabernacle. Samson 
when the Spirit came upon him became preternaturally 
strong, and both Balaam and King Saul were seized by 
the Spirit, who constrained them to prophesy, although 
they were utterly destitute of grace. From his birth, 
John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Ghost rather 
as an outward gift than as an inward Pentecostal grace. 
This Old Testament endowment of the Spirit did not 
render him sinless from his birth, but it inspired in him 
a vivid sense of Israel’s apostasy and of his own voca¬ 
tion to preach repentance of sin as a preparation for the 
coming of the Messiah King. He was endowed with a 
dauntless courage to rebuke sins, even in the court of 
the king, and an irresistible eloquence, not of the pol¬ 
ished Grecian, but of the rugged Hebrew type, to sway 
the multitudes toward righteousness. He was greater 
than Abraham, the founder, than Moses, the lawgiver, 
than David, the warrior king, of the Hebrew nation, and 
yet less than the least in the kingdom of Christ. Al¬ 
though these least had not the showy gifts of the Spirit, 
they had what is far better, the Comforter in their 
hearts crying, “ Abba, Father.” The filial fooling, with 


THE EXTRAORDINARY GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT. 309 

the assurance of forgiveness, is the distinguishing New 
Testament grace, together with the Pentecostal fulness 
of the Spirit as the Comforter and Sanctifier. 

It is natural that extraordinary gifts should flow forth 
from the Holy Spirit in New Testament times, to sig¬ 
nalize the beginning of His distinctive work as the Para¬ 
clete. When the Son of God by the incarnation came 
into the sphere of matter, it was to be expected that His 
miracles would be in the realm of things sensible. But 
the Comforter marked His entrance into the human 
spirit by miracles in the sphere of mind, the word of 
wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, as a charism, 
miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, tongues and 
interpretations. The only exception is healing, which 
Bengel suggests has continued to the present time as a 
specimen of the other gifts, just as the portion of manna 
laid up in the ark was a proof of the ancient miracle. 
In order to the intelligent discussion of this charism it 
will ' be necessary to describe another with which it 
stands in immediate connection, the gift of faith. This 
differs from common or saving faith, called the grace of 
faith, in the following particulars : 

1. The grace of faith is grounded on the general 
promises of the Bible, while the gift of faith rests not 
on the written Word, but on the assurance inwrought 
by the Holy Spirit “ that the prayer will be answered 
and the work accomplished.” (Whedon.) 

2. Hence the grace of faith, when exercised in 
prayer for temporal blessings, is always accompanied by 
the condition “ If it be Thy will.” The gift of faith is 
the assurance beforehand that it is God’s will to bestow 
the thing desired. 

3. Saving faith is morally obligatory upon every soul 


3io 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


having a knowledge of its object, Christ, and the ab¬ 
sence of such faith is the ground of condemnation (John 
iii. 18). Miracle-working faith, a special gift, is re - 
quired of no one, but is bestowed sovereignly by the 
Holy Spirit, “ severally as he will.” Hence there is no 
more culpability for the absence of this faith than there 
is for a lack of the gift of tongues. 

4. The grace of faith is designed to be permanent, 
and is as indispensable to spiritual, as breathing is to 
natural, life. Faith as a charism is not permanent but 
occasional. St. Paul sometimes had it and could heal 
(Acts xxviii. 8), and sometimes he had it not and could 
not heal, as we infer from II Timothy iv. 20. 

5. The grace of faith transforms the moral character. 
The charism of faith has no such effect any more than 
any other extraordinary gift of the Spirit. Balaam and 
King Saul prophesied under the power of the Spirit, 
and both died accursed of God. There is at least one 
man in the flames of hell to-day who was once com¬ 
missioned to work miracles. Compare Matt x. 1-4 and 
xxvi. 24, John xvii. 12. Jesus Christ intimates that 
Judas will have plenty of company from the ranks of 
Christian ministers who in theory acknowledged the 
Lordship of Christ, after the strictest orthodoxy, and in 
the exercise of their profession cast out devils and did 
many mighty works (Greek, miracles), but had not that 
grace of faith which works by love, purifies the heart 
and brings its possessor into vital union with Christ. 
“ The distinguishing feature in those men is an impure, 
often fanatical boldness in the faith, which, though en¬ 
abling them to perform outward acts of a marvellous 
nature, yet fails to exercise any influence upon their own 
moral life —just the sort of thing described by Paul in 


THE EXTRAORDINARY GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT. 31 I 

I Cor. xiii. 2, and the manifestations of which are to be 
met in every age, especially in times of great religious 
excitement.” (Meyer.) 

If the Greek reader will scrutinize this Pauline text 
he will find that Paul’s form of hypothesis (can with the 
subjunctive) assumes the condition, faith without love, 
as possible with some present expectation that may be 
realized. In other words, men may have a mountain- 
removing faith in unregenerate hearts. A character as 
paradoxical as this may exist. 

“In the exercise of His sovereignty the Spirit may 
give power of service even to men who are not converted. 
Or rather, there are men to whom He comes who resist 
His saving power and welcome His working power. . . . 
As there was Balaam in the Old Testament times, so 
there are to be found now those who preach the gospel 
to others and yet themselves are castaways.” (Dr. John 
Robson.) 

“ It is certain the faith which is here [Matt. xvii. 20] 
spoken of does not always imply saving faith. Many 
have had it who thereby cast out devils and yet will at 
last have their portion with them. It is only a super¬ 
natural persuasion given a man that God will work thus 
by him at that hour.” (John Wesley.) 

The doctrine of the extreme faith-cure advocates, that 
the atonement of Christ covers sickness as well as sin, 
and that deliverance from both is through faith, rests 
chiefly on Isa. liii. 4. It is true, as they claim, that the 
Hebrew word for “sorrows” is usually translated “sick¬ 
ness.” This is sustained by Matt. viii. 17, “Himself 
took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.” Let us 
examine these texts. Isaiah gives a prophetic picture 
of the Messiah while in the flesh on earth as a man of 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


3 1 - 

sorrows, despised, afflicted, erroneously esteemed smit¬ 
ten of God, oppressed, brought as a lamb to the slaughter 
and wounded for our transgressions. In the middle of 
this catalogue of humiliations, sufferings and insults, 
having no reference to His miracles, occurs the phrase, 
“ carried our sorrows,” a phrase in perfect accord with 
the list of disabilities and abuses above described. To 
make the passage harmonious both the translators of 
the Authorized Version and the revisers have employed 
the word “ sorrows ” instead of “ sicknesses.” In this 
they have given the mind of the Spirit in His portraiture 
of the shady side of the Messiah’s earthly life. But 
should we put “sicknesses” in the place of “sorrows” 
(“ he bore away our sicknesses ”) we have only a descrip¬ 
tion of the miraculous cures wrought by Christ during His 
abode on the earth, but no promise of their continuance 
afterwards. He is not now under chastisement, stand¬ 
ing dumb before the judgment seat and bruised for our 
iniquities. The whole dreadful catalogue of human 
sufferings is past forever, and with it the painful strain 
of His tender sensibilities and sympathies with human 
suffering with which He was brought into constant con¬ 
tact in His ministry of bodily healing. The question 
now arises, What is the significance of Matt. viii. 17, 
“ Himself took [away] our infirmities and bare [away] 
our diseases ” ? It cannot mean that He took the lep¬ 
rosy, the epilepsy, the fever, the blindness upon Him¬ 
self to defile and corrupt His body, but that He mirac¬ 
ulously removed them to attest His Messiahship and 
His divinity. But since His ascension He gives a 
higher kind of proof of His Godhood through the trans¬ 
forming power of the Holy Ghost transfiguring sinful 
souls, the converting power, the only miracle designed 


THE EXTRAORDINARY GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT. 313 

to be repeated down to the end of time, “ the everlast¬ 
ing sign which shall not be cut off; instead of the thorn 
the fir tree, and instead of the brier the myrtle;” instead 
of the sot the saint, instead of the rascal the righteous, 
the one transformed into the other in the twinkling of 
an eye by the new birth through the Holy Ghost. 
Read I Cor. vi. 9, 10: fornicators, adulterers, abusers of 
themselves with man kind, thieves, drunkards and ex¬ 
tortioners, as vile a gang as ever were photographed for 
a rogues’ gallery : “such were some of you,” the Corin¬ 
thian church, “ but ye are washed, ye are justified in the 
name of the Lord Jesus, and ye are sanctified by the 
Spirit of our God.” These are the “ greater works ” 
than bodily healing, yea, than raising corpses to life. 

With far less strain of the Scriptures one might prove 
that the atonement exempts the believer from physical 
death. For we read that the purpose of Christ was 
“ that through death he might destroy him that hath 
the power of death, that is, the devil,” that He “ hath 
abolished death ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die.” “ This is the bread which cometh 
down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and 
not die.” An extremist might insist on the literalism 
of these texts and teach that faith can ward off death. 
If it is said that believers do die, we reply that believ¬ 
ers are sick also. If faith is not designed to prevent 
death, it is not designed to prevent consumptions, fevers 
and plagues, the sappers and miners of death. 

The eager desire of some Christians to secure the 
extraordinary gifts of the Spirit is not an evidence of 
spiritual progress, but rather of spiritual retrogression. 
The disciples of the eccentric Edward Irving, the mod¬ 
ern Catholic Apostolic Church, imagine that they have 


314 


TIIE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


“ obtained the gifts ” by restoring the elaborate ecclesi¬ 
astical organization outlined in Eph. iv. n, apostles, 
prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Their suc¬ 
cess has not made a deep impression on either the world 
or the Church. One branch of the Second Adventists 
believe that they have by faith been endowed with sev¬ 
eral of the gifts of the Spirit, such as tongues and inter¬ 
pretations. A large number of Christians of various 
churches are diligently inculcating the doctrine that 
every kind of sickness will invariably be cured by the 
grace of faith possible to all Christians, and that the 
absence of such faith is a species of unbelief, constitut¬ 
ing a grave defect of the spiritual life. We believe that 
this hankering after these gifts is undermining the 
spirituality of those who indulge in it, and we commend 
to them the grand aim.set before us by St. Paul, “I 
show unto you a more excellent way,” love. The 
church in which the gifts were specially manifest is the 
most undesirable of the New Testament churches. I 
would not swap off for it the poorest one of the fifteen 
churches of my pastoral life. “ Indeed, I should loathe 
to minister to such a sorry set of Christians as were 
the Corinthians with all their miracles and tongues. 
Wrangling about Paul, Apollos and Cephas, running 
after false teachers, full of envying, strife and division, 
harboring an incestuous person without discipline, de¬ 
grading the Lord’s supper into a feast of appetite, giv¬ 
ing to Paul constant sorrow and anxiety, the Corinthians 
needed miracles to give them a respectable title to a 
Christian name; and they so abused miraculous gifts by 
jealousy and contention that they turned their Sabbath 
assemblies into cabals of men and women shouting, 
singing, praying, prophesying, pell-mell, without decency 


THE EXTRAORDINARY GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT. 315 

or order.”* From such a style of Christianity “Good 
Lord, deliver us,” and lead us into the heritage of I Cor. 
xiii. by “ the more excellent way.” 

The proof text for faith cure most frequently quoted 
is James v. 14-16. The first of these verses is often 
cited as though it read thus, “Is any sick among you? 
Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them 
pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of 
the Lord, and he shall be healed But the words in 
italics are not Scripture. The healing does not follow 
the anointing and praying as a divinely ordained 
sequence, but it follows the prayer of faith. We con¬ 
tend that the context, especially the classification of 
the healing with the miracle-working faith of Elijah, 
proves beyond dispute that James is here speaking of 
charismatic or extraordinary faith and not of the grace 
of faith. Wherever the former is bestowed the healing 
will take place. Whenever it is withheld because 
divine wisdom sees that death or continued sickness is 
better for the accomplishment of God’s purposes, no 
healing will ensue. This was just as true in the days 
of St. James as it is now, that faith for a blessing con¬ 
trary to the divine will is an impossibility. There may 
be attempts to believe and efforts resembling faith, but 
true faith for a thing not in the divine will cannot exist. 

About the use of oil recommended by James there 
are two opinions : (1) That it is sacramental, because the 
anointing is to be in the name of the Lord. But this 
does not make it a sacrament, since all the activities of 
Christian life are to be “in His name.” Moreover, there 
is no indication in primitive history that oil was used 
sacramentally. In the consecration of kings and priests 

*Dr. J. P. Thompson. 


316 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


it was used as a symbol of the Holy Spirit. But James 
could not consistently be enjoining the use of a symbol 
after the thing signified, the Pentecostal gift, had actu¬ 
ally descended. In the progress of revelation there is no 
such anomaly as a retrogression from the antitype to 
the type. (2) That olive oil has sanative qualities. 
The Orientals used it medicinally, anointing the sick 
and wounded. Hence the seventy disciples sent out 
on the trial mission were directed to anoint the sick as 
a salutary and approved medicament (Mark vi. 13). If 
we translate the injunction of James into modern lan¬ 
guage it would be, “ Use the best approved means, 
quinine, aconite, etc., and pray and call upon the church, 
represented by the elders, to invoke the divine blessing 
upon the remedies.” 

Before we leave this text in St. James we call atten¬ 
tion to an irrefutable proof that the faith in the phrase 
“prayer of faith ” is not the grace of faith which any¬ 
body can exercise, but a special gift sovereignly be¬ 
stowed. James says “ the effectual prayer . . . availeth 
much.” This translation, as Dr. Whedon observes, “ is 
almost a tautology,” the effectual prayer produces an 
effect. The Revised Version endeavors to obviate this 
difficulty thus : “The supplication of a righteous man 
availeth much in its working.” But the old English 
annotators, Benson, Bull, Hammond, Macknight, and 
the German Michaelis and the modern Dr. Whedon 
insist that the original for “ in its working ” is passive, 
signifying “inwrought.”* The prayer is a special 
exercise supernaturally inspired, and the faith is not 
the common grace of faith required of all, but the 
extraordinary gift of faith inwrought by the Holy 

*See Gal. v. 6, margin. 


THE EXTRAORDINARY GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT. 317 

Spirit, as it is classed with the nine charisms described 
in I Cor. xii. 8-11, which are distributed by the Spirit 
“to every man severally as he will.” Hence failure in 
the faith cure is inevitable in every case where the 
prayer of faith is not energized or inwrought by the 
Holy Spirit. There were probably such failures in 
the days of James in the case of those who did not by 
prayer seek to know the will of God before calling for 
the elders. In all cases where the gift of faith pre¬ 
ceded this call there could be no failure. 

The relation of this subject to the work of the Holy 
Spirit is very intimate. “ Likewise the Spirit also help- 
eth our infirmity [singular number, Revised Version] ; 
for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the 
Spirit maketh intercession for us with groanings which 
cannot be uttered.” Here the infirmity is ignorance 
of what lies in the divine will. Is it pardon, the new 
birth, entire sanctification, the fulness of the Spirit or 
grace to help in time of need ? No Bible reader need 
be in perplexity respecting all these spiritual blessings. 
“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him 
up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give 
us all things ?” This text (Rom. viii. 32) following so 
soon after that which emphasizes our ignorance of what 
is best for us and our need of a divine teacher (verse 
26), is in seeming contradiction to it, and it can be 
harmonized in no other way than by understanding that 
the “ all things ” which are promised “with him” are 
spiritual blessings, while the things in respect to which 
we are ignorant whether we should pray for them or 
not, are temporal blessings, relief in want, deliverance 
out of peril, ease when in pain, and restoration from 
sickness, 


318 the gospel of the comforter. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 
blasphemy against the holy spirit. 


T HIS is a doctrine which rests on the following un¬ 
disputed proof texts: Matt. xii. 31, 32, Mark iii. 
28-30 (in which the Revised Version has “ eter¬ 
nal sin ”), and Luke xii. 10. Orthodox theologians dis¬ 
agree about the meaning of John xv. 22-24, Heb. vi. 
4-6, x. 29, II Peter ii. 14 and I John v. 16. 

Respecting the nature of this awful sin there are two 
opinions which divide the Christian world. One was 
maintained by Chrysostom, that this sin is the assertion 
that the miracles wrought by Christ through the aid of the 
Holy Spirit were done through the agency of the devil. 
Universalists and all who teach the doctrine of eternal 
hope advocate this view because it seems to limit this 
sin to the contemporaries of Jesus Christ. 

The other theory, championed by Augustine, defines 
this sin as the obstinate impenitence of the sinner till 
the end of life while inwardly approving Christian doc¬ 
trine as divine, yet, against his own convictions, oppos¬ 
ing and blaspheming or slandering Christ and persever¬ 
ing in this deliberate contempt till the close of life. 
Hence this sin is possible in the present time. This is 
a subject on which we are not disposed to dogmatize. 
Yet it is a part and an important part of Christ’s teach¬ 
ing and should not be withheld from the hearers of the 
gospel. 

The most solemn and awful demonstration of the 


BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT. 3 1 9 

personality of the Holy Spirit is inferred from the fact 
that the only irremissible sin is found in some offence 
against Him. There could be no such pre-eminent of¬ 
fence against an impersonality, an influence, effluence 
or attribute. That such an offence is possible is im¬ 
plied in the warning given by the tender and merciful 
Son of God. Our subject does not require us to answer 
the question, “What constitutes this sin ? ” Yet since 
there is much inquiry we will modestly express our 
opinion. We agree with Julius Muller that the unpar¬ 
donable sin is not an isolated sin, but sin in its full 
development.* This is nearly the same as Joseph 
Cook’s definition, " Any sin that involves final impeni¬ 
tence.” It is a result of a series of acts of known sin, 
the outcome of a course of deliberate rejection of light 
and defiant repulse of the Holy Spirit’s warnings in 
that great debate upon the subject of duty and destiny, 
a question which every soul in probation must answer 
for itself alone. He who persistently gives the wrong 
answer will come into a state of matured enmity to 
God and a “hatred of recognized eternal holiness.” 
His irreversible choice is, “ Evil, be thou my good. ”It, 
not God, closes the door of repentance. For such are 
the laws of man’s moral nature that he can finally and 
eternally shut up his personality against grace and irre¬ 
versibly expel the Holy Spirit whom he once received. 

We must bear in mind that the dispensation of the 
Holy Spirit is the highest possible expression of divine 
mercy. God’s mercy endureth forever, but man’s abil¬ 
ity to appropriate that mercy is for a short time. A 
man who by abuse of his body has entirely wasted its 
power of nutrition by assimilating.food may starve in a 

* “ Christian Doctrine of Sin,” ii, pages 418, etc. 


320 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


house full of bread. There will be bread and to spare 
after the last returnless prodigal has refused his Father’s 
tenderest and most persuasive invitation. At the fu¬ 
neral of every lost soul the Father, the Son and the 
Holy Spirit will head the procession as the chief mourn¬ 
ers, preceding the earthly kindred. There is nothing 
capricious or arbitrary on the part of the Holy Spirit in 
leaving a human soul to its deliberate self-determined 
destiny. He is not a judge, but a helper, and He ceases 
to help when character has become fixed in sin. All 
sin tends towards final permanence in sin. Can a man 
once truly regenerated fall into sin and take on this 
final permanence? Find your answer in I John v. 16, 
which plainly implies that “a brother” may “sin unto 
death ” and put himself beyond the reach of prayer. 
Study Heb. vi. 4-8 and Julius Muller’s weighty remarks 
thereon. The convert from Judaism who after Chris¬ 
tian enlightenment and partaking of the Holy Ghost 
returned to Judaism must pronounce Jesus a false 
Messiah and the Holy Spirit an illusion in order to be 
received into the synagogue. 

The fact that the Holy Spirit is the last test of ortho¬ 
doxy throws much light on the subject of the irremis- 
sible sin. Human history has had three dispensations 
— that of the Father, the test of which is the worship 
of one God; that of the Son, the test of which is faith in 
Him as an infallible teacher, imitation of His perfect 
example, reception of Him as atoning Saviour, and 
obedience to Him as an invisible king, the God-Man. 
The last and highest test of loyalty in those who have 
stood the two former tests is the Holy Spirit, the sub¬ 
stitute for the personal presence of our risen Lord Jesus. 
To receive Him is a more difficult test, for the following 


BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT. $2 I 

reasons: i. The Spirit is perfectly abstract and color¬ 
less, beyond the reach of the senses. 2. He is desti¬ 
tute of the interest which attaches to the incidents of a 
bodily history. 3. His presence addresses no natural 
faculty of mental perception, and His work in the appli¬ 
cation of redemption is internal and mysterious. 4. 
He cannot be discovered by any process of reasoning. 
5. Faith in Jesus Christ, resulting in newness of life 
and imparting the power of spiritual intuition, is the only 
avenue through which He can be known and received. 
Receptivity must first be unfolded from a capacity 
existing unused in the natural man, before the Holy 
Spirit can be apprehended as a glorious and blessed 
reality. For the reception of the fulness of the Spirit 
there must be a large capacity produced by a strong 
and mature faith. 6. Such a faith is possible to those 
only who make “a total, affectionate and irreversible 
self-surrender" to Christ, consecrating to Him our 
good things, our possessions, our social standing and 
influence and all our powers of body and mind. When 
we received Christ we abandoned our evil things. 
This is an act less difficult than laying all our good 
things on the altar of Christ. Hence the greater sever¬ 
ity of this last test. For this reason many fail to enter 
consciously into the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. 
They receive Christ, but remain spiritual babes, many of 
them so weak and prone to sin that Paul cannot call 
them wholly spiritual, but rather carnal (I Cor. iii. 1). 
In view of this fact, John Owen in his “ Pneumatology’’ 
utters words of deep solemnity : “ Wherefore the duty 
of the Church now immediately respects the Spirit of 
God, who acts toward it in the name of the Father and 
of the Son, and with respect unto Him it is that the 


322 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

Church in its present state is capable of an apostasy 
from God. . . . The sin of despising His person and 
rejecting His work now is of the same nature with 
idolatry of old, and with the Jews’ rejection of the per¬ 
son of the Son.” Hence the Paraclete as a specialty 
claiming the new prominence of the day of Pentecost 
has become the touchstone of true piety and the article 
of a standing or falling Church. The words of Fletcher 
are very similar to those of Owen : “To reject the Son 
of God manifested in the Spirit, as worldly Christians 
are universally observed to do, is a crime of equal mag¬ 
nitude with that of the Jews who rejected Christ mani¬ 
fested in the flesh.” 

“ A parable may help to show the relation of the 
three Persons of the Trinity to man’s salvation. A 
father wishes his younger son to be educated for a cer¬ 
tain profession. The elder brother of that son, who has 
learned it himself, gives all the books and apparatus 
necessary for acquiring a knowledge of it. And they 
together engage a teacher to teach the younger son the 
knowledge required. And it is evident — and this is 
the point of the illustration — that the final success of 
the plan of the father and elder brother depends on the 
success of the teacher whom they appoint. It is mani¬ 
fest, too, that it is only at this point that the younger 
son can yield to or resist the efforts of his father and 
brother. He may speak with the greatest respect and 
affection of both, but if he refuses to be taught by the 
teacher he will remain ignorant of the science which 
they wish him to learn. On the other hand, he may 
speak most rebelliously of both, but if he submits to the 
teaching of the teacher they have appointed, he will end 
by learning the profession they wish. Thus resistance 


BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT. 323 


to the father and elder brother may be atoned for by sub¬ 
mission to the teacher they have sent, but resistance to 
the teacher cannot be atoned for by any nominal sub¬ 
mission to the father. By its very nature it will pre¬ 
vent his son learning the science.” 

It is evident in the last supposition that the obe¬ 
dience will be only “ nominal,” not real, while the 
younger son is defeating the cherished purpose of those 
to whom he presents a professed submission. Men can¬ 
not resist and grieve the third Person of the Trinity and 
at the same time be acceptably serving the other two 
Persons. 

Another comparison has been used to illustrate the 
same truth. The Father is like a physician who by his 
wisdom has discovered a cure for a deadly disease. The 
Son is like another physician who by his skill prepares 
the medicine thus discovered. The Holy Spirit is like 
a third physician who goes about administering this 
medicine to the dying. Here again it is manifest that 
it is only by the work of the third physician that the work 
of the other two can be made effectual. They may have 
finished their work and done it perfectly, but if the sick 
refuse to take the only remedy from the hands of the 
third, their resistance cannot but be fatal to them. 
They may profess to admire the wisdom of the dis¬ 
coverer of this infallible specific for their disease and 
the skill of the compounder, but this will not heal 
them. They must render equal honor to the practi¬ 
tioner who applies the medicine, by submitting to all 
his directions. 

Among those. who refuse to obey the Holy Spirit 
there may be great moral diversities, a pure outward 
life or gross immoralities, but they are all alike in their 


324 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


destiny, after a persistent rejection of the agent ap¬ 
pointed to heal them through regeneration and entire 
sanctification by the Holy Spirit. They must all abide 
under the wrath of God evermore.* 


*See Appendix, Note M. 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 325 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 


THE HOLY SPIRIT THE CONSERVATOR OF ORTHODOXY. 



HE term “orthodoxy” signifies right beliefs in re- 


- 1 spect to fundamental Christian doctrines. These 
are, the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ, the 
divine personality and the work of the Holy Spirit, 
the threefold personality of the one divine substance, 
the substitutional atonement, justification by faith, re¬ 
generation and sanctification by the Holy Spirit,— both 
rendered necessary by. original sin (a tendency toward 
sin born in fallen man),—-the future general judgment of 
the race, assigning some to eternal rewards and others 
to endless punishments, according to the permanent 
character voluntarily chosen in this life, the only proba¬ 
tion. This, as I understand it, is the substance of 
orthodoxy. 

In all ages of the Church it has been an important 
question how to preserve evangelical truth in the belief 
of those who profess faith in Christ. Recent events in 
the history of theological seminaries have intensified 
the interest in this question. A favorite method is to 
require the theological teachers to subscribe at stated 
intervals to a well-defined formulary of doctrines. But 
the Holy Spirit has not emphasized any portion of the 
Bible as a shorter catechism embodying the substance 
of revealed truth. If men draw up these creed state- 


326 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


ments in the heat of theological controversy, we are not 
sure that they have excluded all error and included all 
saving truth. Church history shows that men who 
have totally fallen away from a prescribed standard of 
doctrine may, under a temptation to retain their place, 
continue to reaffirm their adherence thereto by putting 
their own definitions into the terms. As the forms of 
liberty survive the spirit, so the orthodox creed may 
long outlive the spirit of orthodoxy. Required sub¬ 
scription to minute, ironclad statements of doctrine 
has been the cause of much contention, and a wedge 
for dividing the body of Christ. Language may be so 
twisted and words so defined that uniformity of belief 
cannot always be insured in this way. Hence the most 
poisonous liberalism may be taught under the forms of 
evangelical truth. It is my purpose in this chapter to 
show a better way, the New Testament way, of con¬ 
serving orthodoxy; a way that always succeeds where- 
ever it is faithfully followed. 

The fulness of the Holy Spirit in pastor and people 
will always insure a correct theology. St. John in his 
First Epistle, ii. 20-27, regards the anointing or full 
baptism of the Spirit as the great safeguard against 
being drawn away by the falsity of antichrist. Says 
Dr. Whedon : “ The word ‘ Christ ’ signified anointed, as 
chrism signifies oil, or the anointment. Here the unc¬ 
tion or chrism is used in contrast to the antichrists, 
who became such because they had no such sanctifying 
chrism. As long as we possess the holy chrism, we 
will adhere to the holy Christ.” St. Paul also implies 
the same truth when he positively asserts (I Cor. xii. 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 327 


3) that “ no man speaking in the Spirit of God saith 
Jesus is anathema; and no man can say Jesus is Lord, 
but in the Holy Spirit.” We are to understand that in 
translating the Old Testament into Greek, Latin and 
English, the word “ Jehovah ” was very unfortunately 
rendered “ Lord.” This was because the Hebrews had 
for more than a thousand years ceased to pronounce 
the word, and had substituted “ Lord” for it in all their 
public reading of the Scriptures. Hence the title 
“ Lord,” in Jewish conception, meant “ Jehovah.” Thus 
the angels (Luke ii. 11) announce to the shepherds, 
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a 
Saviour, which is Messiah, Jehovah.” This is the real 
import of the celestial message when fully expressed in 
the Hebrew form of thought. “ No man is able to say 
that Jesus is Jehovah, but in the Holy Spirit.” This 
means that no man, however highly cultured, can have 
an inward realization of the supreme Godhead of Jesus, 
but through the illumination of the Holy Spirit giving 
an experimental realization of that truth. Thus it 
pleased God to reveal His Son in Paul. Unregenerate 
men may be trained from infancy in the catechism to 
assert with the lips the supreme deity of Jesus, but it 
is like the talk of the educated parrot till the Spirit of 
truth, or the Spirit of reality, makes the dogma which 
has been drilled into the intellect real to the heart. 
This truth, though not conflicting with reason, is so far 
above reason that no person on the plane of nature, 
unaided by the Paraclete, can ever have a satisfactory 
realization of it. The natural man cannot receive the 
things of the Spirit, and he discredits Jesus when He 


328 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


says, “I and my Father are one.” Therefore this doc¬ 
trine of the Godhead of Christ, which is fundamental to 
the evangelical system, is preserved and rendered vital 
in the Christian consciousness only by the Holy Spirit. 
This basal element of Christianity may well stand for 
the sum total of evangelical truth. 

This brings us to our theme — the Holy Spirit in the 
believer preserves, vitalizes and makes real to the con¬ 
sciousness all the essential truths of the gospel. The 
spirit of inspiration has recorded these truths in the 
Bible; but if He had not made them real and living in 
the Christian experience, they, and the Bible too, would 
have perished long ago. History is full of instances of 
essential truth dropping first out of experience, then 
out of the creed. Thus justification by faith in Jesus 
Christ disappeared from the Roman Catholic Church 
and left the world in darkness for a thousand years. 
Fewer and fewer experienced the conscious pardon of 
sin as witnessed by the Holy Spirit, till finally there 
were not witnesses enough left to keep the precious 
truth from going into oblivion. Luther first experi¬ 
enced and then boldly restored the lost doctrine. Thus 
the doctrine of entire sanctification was lost during 
many Christian ages, and was restored to the modern 
Church by the great spiritual awakening called Meth¬ 
odism, the largest effects of which are not found in the 
census tables of the various Methodisms, but in the 
spiritual impulse given to our entire Protestant Chris¬ 
tianity. 

Church history demonstrates that so long as the 
Church is filled with the Holy Spirit her grasp of all 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 329 


cardinal Christian truth is firm and unwavering. Mr. 
Spurgeon once made this remark: “Doubts about 
the fundamentals of the gospel exist in certain churches, 
I am told, to a large extent. My dear friends, where 
there is a warm-hearted church you do not hear of 
them. They do not come near, it is too warm. I 
never saw a fly alight on a red-hot plate.” A heresy 
in respect to saving truth never yet lighted on a red- 
. hot body of believers. But again and again it has 
alighted on denominations which have cooled off in 
zeal and have fallen into spiritual decay. 

The Holy Spirit not only put on record the facts of 
Christ’s life, but He conserves all the facts in Christ’s 
history, since His death. Rationalism admits His 
death, but denies His resurrection. A risen Jesus is 
scoffed at on the platform of every convention of free¬ 
thinkers. To them He is as dead as Julius Caesar, and 
rules the world only from His tomb. The historic 
proofs all go for nothing so long as they, by their un¬ 
belief, exclude from their hearts the Spirit, whose 
office it is to make real to the heart what is shadowy 
and visionary to the intellect. Dwelling as they do on 
the low plane of naturalism, with its uniform laws, they 
are incapable of receiving the truth that the crucified 
Jesus is alive. Pentecost proves that Jesus has ascended 
and mounted the Father’s throne, a glorified man. All 
modern believers who have had a personal Pentecost 
are convinced by this overwhelming proof. The Spirit 
takes the living and glorified Jesus, and shows Him 
unto them. This proof has all the cogency of an intu¬ 
ition. To those destitute of the Spirit it is all moon- 


330 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

shine — the vaporings of a distempered imagination. 
Let the sceptic candidly weigh the historical proofs of 
the resurrection of Jesus, and he will be astonished to 
lind them a Jacob’s ladder with which to climb up to a 
spiritual experience in which it will be impossible to 
believe that Jesus is still in the tomb. The resurrection 
of the dead soul to newness of life by the Holy Spirit 
is a mighty confirmation of Jesus’ resurrection from the 
tomb. Ask any young convert living with the Spirit’s 
testimony in his heart, whether Jesus is dead or alive, 
and he will joyfully answer: “ I know that He is alive, 
for He saves my soul.” The ascension of Jesus through 
the heavens to the highest place the universe affords is 
a fact not of reason, but of the gospel record made 
real to believers by the Holy Spirit. The apostles who 
saw Him ascend may have had perplexities and intel¬ 
lectual difficulties about what had become of their 
Master above the clouds, whether His body had been 
etherealized and dissipated through space, or whether 
the whole scene was an optical illusion, or as the Ger¬ 
mans say, a kind of scenic withdrawal into invisibility. 
Such sceptical suggestions may have haunted their 
minds during that ten-days’ prayer meeting after the 
ascension, severely testing their faith. But when the 
Spirit came down with His gift of fiery tongues and of 
inward purification, purging the disciples’ eyes from 
every film, and filling their hearts with joy, the lost 
Jesus was suddenly found. He did not stand forth in 
bodily form in their company, saying “ Peace,” but 
stood forth a glorious, undoubted and bright reality. 
He had promised that when He had reached the throne 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 331 

He would send the Comforter, and now the downcom¬ 
ing of the Paraclete demonstrates that Jesus is glorified. 
Who would be knowing anything about Jesus Christ 
to-day, after eighteen hundred years of absence from 
the earth, if it had not been for the Holy Spirit, His suc¬ 
cessor on earth ? His very name would have been for¬ 
gotten by mankind. The absent and the dead soon 
pass out of mind. There was a time when Alexander 
the Great was on the world’s tongue. He died, and 
men ceased to speak of him. So it was with Julius and 
Augustus Caesar, Napoleon in Europe, and with Wash¬ 
ington, Lincoln and Garfield. Why are men talking 
of Bismarck and Gladstone, of President McKinley 
and Queen Victoria? Because they are alive and con¬ 
spicuous figures in modern politics. Why do men and 
women, friend and foe, keep talking, writing and print¬ 
ing the name of Jesus Christ? Why does every infidel 
convention, every assembly of liberals, discuss Jesus of 
Nazareth with so intense interest? Why not let Him 
sleep undisturbed in His tomb in Jerusalem? Why is 
His religion a live question in circles of highest intellect¬ 
ual culture in the nineteenth century? Because Jesus 
Himself is alive in the nineteenth century, and reports 
Himself to the world’s consciousness, to the sinner’s 
fears and to the believer’s hopes, through the Holy 
Ghost sent down from heaven. Just in proportion as 
the world has listened to the voice of this heavenly 
messenger has the world received her Saviour and 
Lord, and just in proportion as the Church has been 
filled with the Holy Spirit has she firmly held the 
truths ’ of orthodoxy. But whenever the Spirit has 


332 the gosfel of the comforter. 

ceased to sway her, and she has fallen into a decay of 
her spiritual life, she has relaxed her grasp upon the 
fundamentals of the gospel. Study the history of 
Romanism, and see if her departure from the saving 
truths of Christianity to the doctrines of men was not 
through a long period of spiritual decline and worldli¬ 
ness. As the fourth centennial of Luther’s birth 
has just passed and our minds are specially turned 
toward Germany, we trace with sadness the blighting 
rationalism in that land of the Reformation to its source, 
and we find it to be a church spiritually dead; a Lu¬ 
theranism losing the spirit of Luther, which was the 
Spirit of his Master, and trusting in the sacraments for 
salvation. The Anglican Church has travelled the same 
road from spirituality through formalism to ritualism 
on the one hand, and to liberalism on the other. But 
we need not cross the Atlantic to find exemplifications 
of the truth of our theme. Study the history of theo¬ 
logical thought in New England since the landing of the 
Pilgrims. They were brimful of the Holy Ghost, hold¬ 
ing evangelical truth so firmly that exile in a savage 
wilderness was cheerfully chosen in preference to a sur¬ 
render of one saving truth of the New Testament. But 
unwisely limiting the right to vote in town-meeting to 
church members, for political power unconverted men 
crowded into the church. These soon got into the pul¬ 
pits, for the pulpit was in high honor and afforded a 
good salary for life, levied by a lawful tax upon the 
property of the town. Preachers generally preach what 
the people delight to hear. A church declining from a 
high spirituality did not like to hear of the exceeding 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 333 


sinfulness of sin and its dreadful punishment in hell 
fire, the necessity of repentance, the new birth, and 
sanctification of the Spirit. So the pulpit furnished the 
pews with good moral essays on the beauty of virtue, 
and as a result every distinctive truth of the gospel 
was neglected for a generation in many pulpits. To be 
silent on any doctrine for a generation is to root it out 
of the faith of the Church. Then came Whitefield 
.sounding the trump of a spiritual resurrection, shouting 
to preachers and people on Boston Common words 
which seemed then most radical and revolutionary, 
“ Ye must be born again.” Forty thousand in New 
England believed and were born of the Holy Spirit. 
But many churches shut their doors against this 
God-sent apostle of a spiritual Christianity, and the 
preachers went on reading their moral essays. There 
was no difference in the printed creeds of the spiritual 
and unspiritual churches. They were all alike Congre¬ 
gational. But the spiritual preachers preached the 
creed, while the mere moralists ignored it for another 
generation. At last the day came for drawing the line 
between spiritual death and spiritual life, when, lo, it 
was found that that line was the exact demarcation be¬ 
tween orthodoxy and heterodoxy, between the Evan¬ 
gelicals and the Unitarians. Then the fact was made 
public that a majority of the old Puritan churches in 
eastern Massachusetts had been so long without the 
Holy Ghost that they could not say that Jesus is Lord: 
they repudiated the corner-stone of orthodoxy, the su¬ 
preme Godhead of Jesus Christ. Still they taught that 
He was in a degree divine, the most exalted creature in 


334 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


the universe, far above archangels, cherubim and sera¬ 
phim, and next to the throne of God. They held to 
the miraculous basis of Christianity, the supernatural 
birth of Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit in regenera¬ 
tion, the inspiration of the Scriptures, the resurrection 
of the dead, the general judgment and eternal punish¬ 
ment. William Ellery Channing, when teaching school 
in Richmond, Va., came to the conclusion, and records 
it in his journal, that he could no longer worship Jesus 
Christ. What follows this denial of supreme worship 
to the Son equally with the Father? The very moment 
he and his adherents stepped off from the Rock of Ages, 
the Godhead of Christ, they found their feet on an in¬ 
clined plane of ice, sliding, sliding, sliding, down, down, 
down, finding no logical stopping place till they have 
reached bald and bare deism, a cold and misty panthe¬ 
ism merging into blank atheism disguised with the eu¬ 
phonious name of “ agnosticism.” Let us show you 
the logical steps down this stairway from Puritan ortho¬ 
doxy to atheism. First, a spiritual decay in the 
churches till the Holy Spirit no longer reveals Christ 
in the heart, and His supreme divinity is repudiated. 
Second, if Christ is a creature He cannot make a sub¬ 
stitutional expiation for sin, so the atonement drops 
away; for a creature, whether man or archangel, can 
do no more than his duty; no merit of his can be 
the sinner’s plea. Hence, in the third place, there 
is no justification by faith, for this rests on the atone¬ 
ment. If there is no pardon of sin through faith in the 
only Saviour, then follows, as a fourth step, salvation by 
works, every man his own saviour. Next, sin is viewed 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 335 


as a mere incident in the natural unfoldings of a finite 
being, the tumbling down of an infant taking its first 
toddling steps in probation, a childish disease like the 
chicken-pox, to be outgrown by intellectual and moral 
development. Hence there is no need of regeneration. 
All men are born pure as Adam in Eden. Original or 
birth sin is a blot on the character of a good God; all 
men are born with a germ of goodness in them, which 
only needs culture to develop into Christianity. As 
there is no need of regeneration and sanctification, the 
Holy Ghost, as the personal Regenerator and Sanctifier, 
is a superfluity. He is degraded from a person to an 
influence or an attribute. Thus far the inspiration of 
the Bible has stood unquestioned. But now this is 
sifted to the bottom and reported to be a mass of chaff. 
Theodore Parker, the advance destroyer of orthodoxy, 
made the brilliant discovery that the Bible is a superfluity, 
man being by nature furnished with a set of moral judg¬ 
ments and religious intuitions, a great deal better than 
God’s Word in the form of a book, and that the volume 
which is the ultimate authority with the Christian is no 
moVe inspired than ‘I his grandfather’s old musket” 
which did good service at Lexington. The next doc¬ 
trine to be thrown overboard was eternal punishment. 
There are two ways of disposing of this exceedingly 
disagreeable item of orthodoxy. The Universalist 
thinks that God is too good to damn him, and the Uni¬ 
tarian thinks that he is too good to be damned, so that 
both rid themselves of this unpleasant doctrine, the one 
on the ground of God’s benevolence, and the other on 
that of man’s goodness. Thus we see that in the space 


336 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


of about seventy years Puritan churches which began 
by neglecting to seek the work of the Holy Ghost in 
personal experience, have slidden rapidly down to 
atheism, till at last professed Christian ministers, with¬ 
out any shock to their own consciences or the moral 
sense of their churches, step out of their pulpits into 
Thomas Paine Memorial Hall, to give countenance to 
the infidels in heaping abuse upon Jesus Christ and His 
Church. 

The Godhead of Jesus Christ protects all other vital 
doctrines, the personality of God and the dignity and 
the worth of man and the true estimate of sin. Admit 
that the supreme God stooped to the amazing conde¬ 
scension of taking man’s nature and dying in our be¬ 
half, and you give to man a value, and to sin a signifi¬ 
cance, utterly beyond all computation. 

Deny the incarnation of God in man, and you tear 
away from him his patent of nobility issued by heaven 
itself, and you leave him a highly developed tadpole, 
an educated and trained monkey evolved into a man 
void of immortality. In the same way the cross of 
Christ is the only correct measure of sin. If Jesus, is 
God in human form, His death as the sin-bearer gives 
sin a tremendous significance. Otherwise it is a mere 
trifle, and its eternal punishment is offensive to reason 
and disgusting to the delicate moral sensibilities of our 
refined civilization. But what was the first step which 
led down from Puritanism to atheism? It was the at¬ 
tempt to build up a Church without the Holy Spirit in 
conviction for sin, in regeneration and sanctification. 
I have now shown by historical examples in both Eu- 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 


33 7 


rope and America that an orthodox creed must perish 
when the.spiritual life dies out of a denomination. I 
might show that the Unitarian or “ Hicksite ” Friends 
originated in exactly the same way. History is phi¬ 
losophy teaching by examples. Like causes will con¬ 
tinue to produce like effects. It will be true of the 
existent evangelical churches that the speculative age 
will succeed the spiritual if we suffer the spiritual era 
to depart. Then heresies will swarm into the vacuum 
left by the Holy Ghost. I fear that other denomina¬ 
tions by their neglect of the Holy Spirit are stepping 
out upon the inclined plane of ice. The liberalistic 
drift of Andover is no surprise to me. Years ago I 
announced to the public that the Holy Ghost was not 
receiving His due honor in the preaching and theologi¬ 
cal thinking of New England scholars. As a proof I 
cited the “ Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review,” 
published at Andover, thirty-six volumes, 1844-1879, 
containing one thousand two hundred and fifty articles 
by three hundred contributors, as not containing one 
article on the personality and offices of the Holy Spirit 
in the salvation of men. This indicates a correspond¬ 
ing silence in the pulpit during the same period. As 
a result of this long neglect of the Spirit, a plentiful 
crop of speculative errors in respect to fundamental 
truth will soon spring up. The same causes are at 
work in other evangelical denominations. The theologi¬ 
cal thought of Methodism (M. E.) as reflected in her 
Quarterly for the last fifty years, has not one article on 
the Holy Spirit, save one on the sin against the Holy 
Ghost and one on “ The Holy Spirit as a Factor in our 


338 THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 

Intellectual Life.” It has been the boast of Methodism 
that she has conserved her orthodoxy by her spirituality 
and intense evangelistic zeal. Happy would it be for 
herself and for Protestantism, of which she is becoming 
the leader, if this boast of no doctrinal schism could 
continue another one hundred and forty years in the 
twenty-seven Methodisms represented in the London 
Ecumenical Conference. We quote from the address 
of the bishops of the M. E. Church in 1880: “ It has 
been the honor of Methodism to have maintained from 
the commencement of its history the doctrines of the 
Church in their purity and efficiency. The controver¬ 
sies which have arisen have had reference to questions 
of church policy, but not to questions of doctrine. Its 
ministers fully accepted the teachings, and were almost 
universally faithful to their vows. We regret to say 
that in some quarters a spirit of latitudinarian specula¬ 
tion has been introduced into the Church, and occasion¬ 
ally ministers have claimed the right to preach doctrines 
which are not in harmony with our articles and stand¬ 
ards.” What is the cure? Not new articles added to 
her creed, not ironclad tests of orthodoxy to be sub¬ 
scribed by her theological professors, but the universal 
baptism of the Spirit. 

Twenty-seven years ago I was closeted alone with a 
distinguished judge in Syracuse to draft the charter of a 
Christian university. The first draft would have suited 
a Mohammedan or a Buddhist institution, for there 
was no allusion to Christ. At my suggestion the adjec¬ 
tive “ Christian ” was inserted before “ learning.” The 
jurist was then asked whether an evangelical interpreta- 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 


339 


tion to “ Christian ” could not be incorporated into this 
charter of the university, so that it could be forever 
held for orthodoxy as found in Methodistic standards. 
The case of Harvard College was cited as having been 
wrested from the Evangelicals, by whom it was founded, 
and turned into a propagandist of liberalism. Never 
will the reply of the judge be forgotten: “ There is no 
safeguard possible. Harvard went over to Unitarianism 
because the Church herself apostatized from the faith. 
You cannot, by legal documents, prevent a denomina¬ 
tion from drifting away from its creed. If Methodism 
backslides from orthodoxy, she will carry her uni¬ 
versities with her.” The lawyer taught the preacher 
an important lesson, which he has exerted himself to 
teach to others ever since. Orthodoxy can be con¬ 
served only by the Holy Spirit abiding in the con¬ 
sciousness of the individual members of the Church. 
Then, and then only, are we safe. But if our piety 
declines with our growth and popularity; if we begin to 
glory in our millions of members and twice ten thou¬ 
sand churches and hundreds of academies and scores 
of colleges; if we admit to our communion our well- 
behaved children without a radical, spiritual change of 
heart, and are satisfied with a decent morality only and 
a reverential attendance upon Sunday worship and the 
sacraments, and do not insist on the new birth, the wit¬ 
ness of the Spirit and the fruits in a holy life, Metho¬ 
dism will inevitably lose her hold on the most vital 
Christian doctrines, and will tumble at length into the 
slough of liberalism. Toward this calamitous end, 
look at the decline of the class-meeting and the at- 


340 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


tempt to abolish probationary membership, which is 
fostered and tested by this peculiar means of grace; 
also the wholesale reception into full membership in 
some parts of our country of seekers who have not yet 
found satisfactory assurance of a change of heart.. We 
should remember that the Methodist Episcopal Church 
South has already gone this length, and the signs of 
the times indicate that the mother of Episcopal. Metho¬ 
dism is fast following in the footsteps of her retro¬ 
grade daughter. How are we to interpret the wide¬ 
spread resort of our churches to worldly devices for 
raising money, devices which appeal to love of self 
instead of love to Christ who bought us with His 
blood? Do not the least objectionable of these com¬ 
mercial expedients, those which avoid the statutes 
against gambling, indicate a drying up of the streams of 
Christian beneficence consequent upon the decline of a 
spiritual life? So it seems to the author. Was there 
not a time when Methodism loved God so ardently that 
she gladly poured out her money for His cause without 
the premium of an oyster supper or pincushion? 
Many of my readers can remember the time when 
church fairs and festivals for ecclesiastical revenues 
were monopolized entirely by denominations which 
slightly emphasize heart religion. From her lofty 
spiritual height Methodism once looked down upon 
these things with abhorrence. 

Do not stigmatize the writer as an alarmist if he 
points out to you manifest symptoms of doctrinal de¬ 
cline following upon the heels of confessed spiritual 
decay. The pulpit is the best place to feel the pulse 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 


341 


of a denomination. Preachers are human and are 
inclined to abandon preaching truths distasteful to 
their audiences. What are the truths which once 
rang out in every Methodist pulpit, but have now 
fallen into neglect and are not preached at all, or are 
passed over like a slurred note in music? The help¬ 
less depravity of the natural man and his need of the 
new birth in order to be saved; the witness of the 
Spirit of adoption directly to the believer. In every 
church under my care I find many who confess igno¬ 
rance of the meaning of the phrase “ the direct witness 
of the Spirit.” They say that they are resting on an 
inference drawn from the marks of regeneration re¬ 
corded in the Bible and observed in their own hearts. 
They are strangers to the direct contact of God with the 
soul, upon which Wesley insisted so fully, frequently and 
emphatically, and which was the distinguishing feature 
of early Methodism and her secret of power. They say 
that the modern pulpit does not insist on this experi¬ 
ence as the privilege of every believer. Thus many are 
left at ease without that heart knowledge of God which 
is eternal life. Hence the rarity of the radical Wesleyan 
type of conversion at our altars, so generally witnessed 
fifty years ago. 

Wesley records the fact that ninety-nine per cent of 
those converted at his‘altars received the direct witness 
of the Spirit to their adoption into the family of God. 
In fact, there seems to be much less prominence given 
in our pulpits to the personality and distinctive offices 
of the Third Person of the Trinity in the plan of salva¬ 
tion than formerly. This is both a cause and an effect 


342 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


of the spiritual decline of the Church. If the Holy 
Spirit is the source of spiritual life, the more clearly He 
is presented to the faith of believers the more firmly 
will He be grasped, the more transforming will be His 
influence and the more abundant His fruit. Where do 
we look for the least zeal for Christ, the least ardor of 
Christian love, the least self-sacrifice for the promotion 
of the gospel, the least travail of soul for the conversion 
of sinners, the fewest conversions to Christ, the least 
interest in missions, the least joy in Christ, the least 
deadness to the world, and the least spirituality? It is 
where the least is said about the Paraclete, the peculiar 
and distinctive work of the Comforter. The unity of 
the Godhead without any such distinctive presentation 
is preached in the Mohammedan mosque, in the Jewish 
synagogue and the Unitarian and Universalist churches, 
with no spiritual fruit. The results are nearly as meagre 
in those Methodist churches where the Holy Spirit has 
been largely eliminated from the preaching. The same 
effects follow the same causes under whatever denomi¬ 
national name. Those denominations which emphasize 
the work of the Spirit are more spiritual and aggressive, 
while those which slight the Spirit are in turn slighted 
by Him, and become dead, worldly and stationary, or 
rather declining and on their way to the graveyard. It 
is vain to say that there is in the neglect of the Holy 
Spirit a compensation, inasmuch as the love of God is 
the more highly exalted and the Father more perfectly 
honored when preachers, neglecting the Third Person of 
the Trinity, give prominence to the First and Second. 
This is a very great fallacy. It is the office of the 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 343 


Spirit to take of the things of Christ and show them 
unto us, to testify of Christ. •“ He shall glorify me.” 
He is the looking-glass which reflects the image of the 
invisible Jesus. Remove or veil the mirror, and there 
is no vision of the Son of God; and where the Son is 
dimly seen, the Father is vaguely apprehended. Where 
the Holy Spirit is not exalted, Christ is not magnified. 
This lessening emphasis of the Spirit’s work is leading 
our people into several grave misapprehensions respect¬ 
ing the spiritual life. One of these is that the office of 
the Spirit is limited to the beginning of the life of God 
in the soul; that He is needed only to convict sinners 
and convert penitents, and then may be dispensed with. 
The process by which this error is inculcated is this: 
A revival is desired. An evangelist is sent for. His pre¬ 
liminary work is to prepare the members of the church 
to be channels of the Holy Spirit. They are all set to 
praying for His outpouring. Prominence is given to Him 
chiefly as the agent in conversion. The evangelist is dis¬ 
missed after his work is done, and the Holy Spirit is dis¬ 
missed also, as being no more needed till the time comes 
round for another revival. This sad mistake arises from 
the fact that the Spirit is made prominent only in the initi¬ 
ation of the spiritual life. In the advancement and sanc¬ 
tification of the believer He is not necessary. The 
young convert either hears nothing said about entire 
sanctification as the distinctive work of the Spirit, or he 
hears it vaguely preached as the result of growth. So 
growth takes the place of the Sanctifier, and He is left 
with nothing to do. So with all the fruits of the Spirit. 
The convert is told that if he would have joy he must 


344 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


seek it in doing every duty. Thus duty, a term used 
only twice in the New Testament, and then having no 
reference to the Christian life, usurps the place of the 
Paraclete, the wellspring of perennial joy. If the con¬ 
vert is troubled with doubts, instead of being pointed to 
the fulness of the Spirit as the source of assurance, ex¬ 
cluding all doubt, he is told that doubts trouble every¬ 
body, and that there is no effectual remedy; but that 
which comes the nearest to the perfect cure is to plunge 
into Christian work so earnestly as to forget your 
doubts. Thus the Holy Spirit is insensibly supplanted. 
What will be the outcome of all this? The fervent 
and highly spiritual era of Methodism will pass away; 
then look out for the speculative era to come; the era 
of doctrinal disintegration, theological confusion and 
schism on dogmatic grounds. 

Again, the law of God and His wrath against sin, the 
sanctions of the law, the eternal punishment of the 
finally impenitent, are not so plainly, boldly and earnestly 
preached as formerly. The law is still the schoolmas¬ 
ter, or child-lfeader, to bring men to Christ. Where the 
law is not preached through deference to long-pursed 
impenitent pew-owners, there are no conversions, and 
the preacher has to send for some evangelist to come 
and preach the same unpalatable truths the pastor has 
kept back; and sinners hear and are pricked in their 
hearts, and cry for pardoning mercy till they find salva¬ 
tion. There was no place for evangelists in Methodism 
fifty years ago, because every preacher preached the 
whole gospel, thundering the terrors of the Lord into 
the cars of slumbering sinners. How rarely do we now 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 345 

hear a sermon on the second coming of Christ and the 
day of judgment! 

“ Day of judgment, day of wonders ; 

Hark ! the trumpet’s awful sound, 

Louder than ten thousand thunders. 

Shakes the vast creations round; 

How the summons 
Will the sinner’s heart confound!” 

This style of preaching is out of fashion in our pul- 
"pits, just as though the everlasting gospel of the change¬ 
less Christ were subject to the caprices of fashion, fickle 
as the winds. Jesus addressed sinners’ fears, uncapping 
the pit of woe, bidding them gaze upon the undying 
worm, the unquenchable fire, and the smoke of the 
torment ascending up for ever and ever. Sin and the 
penalty have not changed. Human nature and the 
motives which influence it are the same in all ages. Who 
then has changed ? Modern Christians are not, through 
the fulness of the Holy Spirit abiding in them, brought 
into such sympathy with Jesus that we realize these 
great truths as He did when He warned men to flee 
from the wrath to come. The penalty of the broken 
law is not preached in liberalistic pulpits, and, as a 
natural consequence, there being no schoolmaster to 
lead Christward, nobody is converted. Ought we not 
to expect the same barrenness to attend similar soft, 
sentimental and velvety preaching in so-called evan¬ 
gelical pulpits? The modern treatment of sin is alarm¬ 
ingly superficial. It is treated as if consisting wholly 
in the act; the state of heart behind the act is ignored. 
The doctrine of original sin, a poison stung into human- 


34$ 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


ity by the sin of Adam and curable only by the 
radical purgation of the believer’s soul, body and spirit, 
through the Holy Ghost in entire sanctification, after 
the new birth, has quite generally dropped out of our 
pulpits. How few preach about sin in believers, re¬ 
pentance in believers, and bring our church members 
under conviction for clean hearts, attainable now by 
faith and faith only in the blood of sprinkling which 
sanctifieth the unclean! In how few pulpits do fam¬ 
ished Christians hear of the great salvation, Christian 
perfection, or the perfect holiness of believers, insisted 
on “ clearly, emphatically and explicitly,” a work de¬ 
scribed by Richard Watson as distinctly marked, and 
“as graciously promised in the Holy Scriptures as 
justification, adoption, regeneration and the witness of 
the Spirit.” Why has the doctrine styled by John 
Wesley “ the grand depositum committed to the people 
called Methodists,” ceased to be heard in a majority of 
our churches, clearly unfolded, bravely defended, and 
faithfully urged upon all believers with its unanswerable 
array of scriptural proof? Is it not because the gen¬ 
eral tone of spirituality has sunk to so low a point that 
few believers in the pulpits and in the pews are thirst¬ 
ing after full salvation? This silence on a vital doctrine 
has almost wrested it from the Church providentially 
raised up for its promulgation. And this silence in 
turn is the result of the lack of the general diffusion of 
the Holy Spirit through our ministry and membership. 
Doctrinal errors must follow. The advance guard of 
the coming host of heresies is already visible—the denial 
of the resurrection of the body, of original sin, of the 


THE SPIRIT CONSERVES ORTHODOXY. 347 

personality of Satan, of entire sanctification after justi¬ 
fication, and of this life as the whole of probation. What 
the main army will be we know not, except that it will 
be marshalled by antichrist. To be forewarned is to 
be forearmed. If I have any special mission in the 
afternoon of my life between this and sunset, it is to 
show to the Church the grave perils which will inevi¬ 
tably follow the abandonment of an intense spirituality 
and the neglect of the doctrinal truths which inspire 
'this vigorous spiritual life. If the warning is heeded, 
doctrinal defections will be checked, and all our mem¬ 
bers will have an experimental realization that Jesus is 
Jehovah. Then will the weak ones become as David, 
and David as the angel of Jehovah in valor and strength. 
Then there will be at least one denomination that the 
devil will not laugh at and the world spit upon. It was 
Whitefield who wisely said that he “ had rather have 
ten members wholly consecrated to God and filled with 
the Spirit, than five hundred that the devil laughs at in 
his sleeve.” The world has an instinctive fear of the 
man who intensely believes the whole Bible from cover 
to cover, who is dead to the world and alive to God in 
every fibre and atom of his being, with every capacity 
filled and every power energized by the Holy Ghost. 
“ Give me a hundred men,” says Wesley, “ who fear 
nothing but sin, and. desire nothing but God, and I will 
shake the world; and I care not a straw whether they 
be clergymen or laymen; and such alone will overthrow 
the kingdom of Satan and build up the kingdom of 
God on earth.” He got his hundred men, and he shook 
the world with an earthquake mightier than can be 


348 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


produced by a million of easy-going nominal Christians 
afraid of the Holy Ghost and apologizing for their own 
distinctive doctrines. 

I wish I had power to reach every Methodist on the 
round earth. I would say, cease living on the heroism 
of your fathers, quit glorying in numbers, sacrificing to 
statistics and burning incense to the general minutes; 
down upon your knees and seek and find for yourself 
the secret of the power of the fathers, a clean heart and 
the endowment of power from on high, then arise and 
unfurl the banner of salvation free and full and a com¬ 
mon-sense theology, the beauty of which, as Joseph 
Cook says, is “ that it can be preached.” Then, in 
double-quick time, charge upon the hosts of sin and 
conquer the world for Christ. A Brahmin recently said 
to a Christian, “ I have found you out. You are not as 
good as your book. If you Christians were as good as 
your book, you would in five years conquer India for 
Christ.” Come, Holy Spirit, and so cleanse and fill us 
that we may be as good as our book! 

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the 
Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever 
shall be, world without end. Amen. 


APPENDIX. 


349 


APPENDIX. 


NOTE A. 

The office of the Holy Spirit is not independent, but ministerial. 

" He ministers Christ to men. He makes His words living and real to 
believers. He is not the revealer of new doctrines, but the inspirer, 
inciting men to record Christ’s words and deeds, and so guiding their 
minds and refreshing their memories as to secure a truthful narrative. 

Bishop Webb calls attention to an inevitable sequence of the recent 
dogma of “infallibility.” By declaring that the Holy Spirit, through one 
earthly voice, from time to time, makes fresh revelations of doctrines to 
be added to the creed, the Roman Catholic Church has placed the Holy 
Spirit in an office which is not His, the office of a revealer of new truth, 
instead of His taking the things of Christ already revealed and applying 
them to believers. We are aware of the reply, that the Pope does not 
reveal, he only, under the illumination of the Holy Spirit, gives a new 
interpretation to the Holy Scriptures; that he is supernaturally endowed 
with insight to discover in Gabriel’s salutation to Mary, “ Hail, highly 
favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women,” the 
doctrine of her immaculate conception, a doctrine never named till after 
a thousand years, and then universally rejected. 

NOTE B. 

The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is that the three Persons are 
by nature equal in power and glory. Theologians call this the essential 
Trinity , which may be represented by three stars on the same level. 

I 2 3 

☆ ☆ ☆ 

But the Scriptures speak of the Persons as performing different offices 
in creation and redemption. In creation the Father is the principal, 
and the Son and the Spirit are agents. The First Person creates through 
the Second and the Third as agents coequal to each other, but in func¬ 
tion subordinate to the First Person. This is called the economic Trin- 



350 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


ity , which may be represented by two stars on a level, with one star 
above them. 

☆ 

2 3 

☆ ☆ 

In the work of redemption there is a different relation of these Per¬ 
sons. The First is said to send the Second, and both of them to send 
the Third. This may be represented by placing the stars thus : 

’☆ 

2 ☆ 

3 ☆ 

This is called the redemptional Trinity. The Father sends the Son, 
and the Father and the Son send the Spirit. This functional Trinity 
the Greek Church denies, but admits the essential Trinity and the 
economic Trinity. It denies the filioque , i. e., that the Holy Spirit pro¬ 
ceeds from the Son. 

NOTE C. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 

The Holy Spirit is a divine Person distinct from the Father and the 
Son. It is hazardous to attempt the definition of the term “ Person ” as 
applied to the Trinity. All the mystery in the doctrine of the Triune God 
is wrapped up in the definition of “ Person.'’ It is a Latin word for the 
Greek Hypostasis , the English subsistence. Yet Dr. Barrow defines 
it as “a singular, subsistent, intellectual being,” and Bethius as “an 
individual substance of a rational nature.” While both definitions may 
be true, they lean strongly toward tritheism, the doctrine of three Gods. 
It is sufficient for our purpose to say that it is a self-conscious agent in 
the Trinity that says / and me (Acts xiii. 2). The proofs of the person¬ 
ality of the Holy Spirit are found (1) in the personal pronoun he , John 
xiv. 16, 17, 26, xvi. 7-14; (2) Personal faculties and offices are ascribed 
to Him, such as searching, knowing, teaching, guiding, speaking and 
grieving; (3) He is the object of faith, obedience and worship, being 
co-ordinate with undisputed Persons in the baptismal formula which is 
the final revelation of God, Matt, xxviii. 19; (4) He is the subject of 
benediction; (5) There is a sin against Him which is irremissible. 

THE DIVINITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

1. He bears divine names and titles: God , Acts v. 3, 4; Lord , II 
Cor. iii. 17, 18 (Revision). 


APPENDIX. 


351 


2. Divine attributes are ascribed to Him. He is omnipresent , Ps. 

cxxxix. 7, I Cor. iii. 16; omniscient, ii. 10; omnipotent, xii. 4-11. Wis¬ 
dom, Eph. i. 17; goodness, Ps. cxliii. 10. “ Let thy good Spirit lead me,” 

etc. (Hengstenberg.) Infallibility, compare Mark xiii. 31 with Acts i. 2. 

3. Divine works are attributed to Him, as creation, Ps. civ. 30; 
xxxiii. 6, “the breath of his mouth” is His Spirit; Job xxvi. 13. 
Inspiration , II Peter i. 21, Mark xii. 36, Acts i. 16, iii. 18, xxviii. 25, 
Ileb. iii. 7. The resurrection of Christ, Rom. viii. 11, I Peter iii. 18, 
compare Acts xvii. 31. 

4. He abides in the spirit of the believer. It is a prerogative of God 
alone to dwell in His creatures. To no other beings or persons is it 
ascribed in the Bible. 

5. A very strong proof of a negative kind is found in the fact that 
He is never mentioned among creatures. When created spirits are 
enumerated, such as angels, archangels, thrones, principalities, powers, 
cherubim and seraphim, the climax never ends with the Holy Spirit, as 
we should expect if He is both a person and a creature. 

“ What do we understand by the personality of the Spirit ? Let us 
here first ask, What do we understand by human personality? It is 
something more than individuality. We can apply the term individual 
to any member of any species of the lower animals, but we cannot apply 
to it the term person. What is it that raises human individuality into 
personality, while individuality is the highest that we can predicate of 
the lower animals ? Obviously, that while in the latter the individual 
is entirely subordinate to the species, among men the individual may 
rise above the species. He has intellect to understand, and the will to 
control and guide his instincts, while the animal is entirely subject to 
them. The stronger and more pronounced these higher qualities are, 
the greater, we say, the personality is. Personality is thus the highest 
form of life with which we are acquainted, and if we apply the term to 
the divine life it is simply because we have no higher term by which to 
define it. It enables us to understand what it is as little as animal 
individuality enables us to understand what human personality is ; but 
as we may define personality as human individuality, so the distinction 
of persons in the Godhead may be expressed as divine personality. 
That, no doubt, transcends human personality infinitely more than 
human personality transcends the individuality of the brute creation. 
But it is the only term we have to apply to it, and it enables us in 
some measure to understand the relation in which we stand to them.'’ 
(Dr. John Robson’s “ Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.”) Lotze, the German 
philosopher, insists that the Infinite is the only perfect personality. 
Small, sceptical philosophers are so shallow as to assert that personality 
is impossible to the Infinite. 


352 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


“ Rev. J. H. Evans, an acceptable minister of the Church of England, 
became Sabellian, i. e., came to deny the distinction of Persons in the 
Trinity so emphatically as to publish, his denial in a book. The fas¬ 
cination of his new opinions so blinded his mind that he did not for a 
time perceive its practical effect. As he did not deny the work of the 
Spirit upon the heart, he did not for a time suspect that the Holy Spirit 
was dishonored. But his own soul suffered and there was a very mani 
fest withering in his ministry. Inquiring for the cause, and finding that 
he had denied the real glory of the Holy Ghost in the economy of re¬ 
demption and had reduced the Son of God to an unsubstantial shadow, 
he collected all the copies of his book which he could secure and con¬ 
signed them to the flames with every mark of contrition. After his 
return to sound Trinitarian views, scarcely ever was there in London a 
more blessed ministry than his.” (Prof. Smeaton’s “ Doctrine of the 
Holy Spirit,” page 350.) 

Arianism, which teaches that both the Son and the Spirit are crea¬ 
tures, destroys the foundation for eminent spirituality, which is pro¬ 
duced by the indwelling Holy Spirit, the gift of the ascended Christ. 
To make Him a creature is to question His ability to impart so great a 
gift. To regard the Spirit as a creature is to cheapen the gift itself and 
thus to weaken the motive for seeking Plis presence and work in the 
heart of the believer. Neither Sabellianism nor Arianism, modern 
Unitarianism, is productive of deep spirituality. This statement is 
confirmed by the history of the Church. 

“Has not the denial of the filioque (and from the Son), which with¬ 
drew the Greek Church from the ground occupied in Athanasius’s time 
by the whole Church in the East and West, operated to the deep injury 
of vital religion in the East? Has it not tended to subvert, in the 
general sentiment of the Greek mind, the deep ground on which the 
Lord Jesus, as mediator, acts as the dispenser of the Spirit and as 
baptizer with the Holy Ghost and with fire ? Has it not operated in an 
unsalutary way, in raising a barrier between the living Head of the 
Church and His people, considered as the habitation of God in the 
Spirit, and on the whole spiritual life of the Greek Church? Our con¬ 
viction is that it has done so. So calamitous, indeed, have been the 
practical results of denying the essential relation of the Spirit as the 
Spirit of the Son, that we cannot fail to perceive them. The Spirit, 
economically considered, is largely dispensed from the Son. And the 
Greek Church has become much of a fossil, untouched by any of the 
reformations or revivals that renovated the Western church.” (Profes¬ 
sor Smeaton.) 

“ If the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you at all, He is there as a Person 


APPENDIX. 


353 


in all His majesty and glory and strength ; in all the infinite resources of 
His deity. As to His gifts, — His grace, —there may be given to you, 
“by measure,” more or less (Eph. iv. 7, I Peter iv. 10); but the Holy 
Spirit Himself, inasmuch as He is a Person, is not with you at all 
unless He is in you in all the fulness of His divine personality, in all 
,the majesty of His Godhead.” (Bishop Webb.) 

In answer to the objection that we should expect to be conscious of 
this majestic presence, Bishop Webb replies: “It is partly because in 
mercy He withholds the signs of His presence. You know how dull we 
are, — how rude to Almighty God; therefore, in very mercy, He does 
not come before us face to face, lest we should look into His face and 
turn our backs upon Him. He deals with us with a holy reserve, lest 
’we should lose our souls; for a terrible condition follows when the glory 
of God is revealed and then rejected.” “ Now have they both seen 
and hated both me and my Father.” “ The ways of the Holy Spirit are 
like the ways of Christy ways of gentleness (Ps. cxliii. 10, Rom. viii. 14, 
Gal. v. 18, Eph. iv. 30).” 


NOTE D. 

Says Dr. J. M. Buckley, editor of the Christian Advocate: 

“ Even from the evangelical churches the sense of sin in large meas¬ 
ure departs. Modern pentitential grief is often hardly worthy of a 
higher description than pensiveness, and the joys of the new creation 
are as feeble as the grief over sinfulness is diluted. The penalty of sin 
inflicted by the righteous indignation of a personal God gives place to 
vague or limited notions of the natural consequences of sin. Without 
once being stirred or hearing anything to make them wretched on ac¬ 
count of their sins, to-day it is possible for the worldly minded, and even 
the vicious, regularly to attend service in many churches that were 
founded on the doctrine of the Holy Ghost . 

“ The condition of the Church of England immediately prior to the 
rise of Wesley, and the state of many of the German churches show 
how any form of error in doctrine or life may coexist with liturgical 
uniformity and artistic, musical, elocutionary and scholastic excellence. 

“ Every age has its peculiar battle. That of the next century is to be 
more subtle than any which has preceded it. As the nations are fight¬ 
ing more and more by diplomacy, and less and less on blood-stained 
fields, so the conflict between the kingdom of grace and that of dark¬ 
ness will be less violent, but more perplexing and dangerous. 

“ Strides in this direction have been made within fifteen years so rapid 
that there are already hundreds, and will soon be thousands, of churches 


354 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


in America as absolutely devoid of the Spirit of God in the New Testa¬ 
ment sense as they would have been if they had been originally intended 
as literary and social clubs. This will be compatible with an increase 
in numbers, and statistics will be rolled up and published, as they are 
now, which no more indicate moral forces than would the roster of an 
army that should include invalids and babes. 

“The churches are pursuing a course which shows how little confi¬ 
dence we have in the power of God. Our methods of securing ac¬ 
cessions proceed increasingly upon the kindergarten principle, which, 
however useful for infants, promotes rather childishness than a child¬ 
like spirit in adults. We are willing to turn over the reformation 
of drunkards to quacks with secret remedies. We make few direct 
efforts to save hardened sinners, and send forth few laymen or ministers 
competent to grapple unbelievers and overcome them, not by argument 
in the plane of polemics, but by the irrestible force of personal testi¬ 
mony to the power of the Holy Ghost. 

“ The conclusive proof, which can leave no one familiar with the his¬ 
tory of early Christianity, of early Presbyterianism, early Quakerism 
or early Methodism in doubt as to the force and danger of these ten¬ 
dencies, is the disuse of church discipline and the prevalence of theo¬ 
ries that it is superfluous and beyond the just powers of the Church, 
except in cases of public scandal. To this may be added the feverish 
anxiety of many clergymen to maintain the appearance of influence and 
popularity by hastening to discuss whatever may attract a passing crowd. 

“ The need is not for great men to turn back the tide of evil and swell 
the tide of good, but that every one, small or great, who knows his sins 
forgiven, and is absolutely certain that he is under the power of an end¬ 
less life, should cry aloud and spare not, so testifying that men will ask 
a reason of the hope that is within him, and find him ready with meek¬ 
ness and fear to give an answer.” 

Says Archdeacon Hare : 

“ When the Spirit of God came to convince the world of sin, what 
was the sin He began with ? If any of us had to convince a person 
of the sinfulness of the world, how should we set about it ? We should 
talk of the intemperance, and licentiousness, and dishonesty, and fraud, 
and falsehood, and envy, and ill-nature, and cruelty, and avarice, and 
ambition, whereby man has turned God’s earth into a place of weeping 
and gnashing of teeth. These, however, are not the sins of which the 
Spirit of God convinces the world ; because all these might be swept 
away, and yet, unless far more was done, the world would continue just 
as sinful as before. All these sins, this terrible brood of sin, were in¬ 
deed to be found in every quarter of the earth, so far as it was then 


APPENDIX. 


355 


peopled, in our Lord’s days, no less plentifully than now. They had 
swollen themselves out, and rose up on every side in the face of heaven, 
like huge mountains ; they flowed from country to country, from clime 
to clime, like rivers ; they spread themselves abroad like lakes and seas, 
lakes of brimstone and Dead Seas, within the exhalations of which 
no soul could come and live. Whithersoever the eye turned, it saw one 
sin riding on the back, or starting from the womb, of another. This 
was the Babel which all nations were busied in building, — and confu¬ 
sion of tongues did not hinder them,— a Babel underground. They 
went on digging deeper and deeper, until its nethermost story well-nigh 
reached to hell, and was only separated from it by a thin, crumbling 
crust. Nevertheless the Spirit of God, when He came to convince the 
world of sin, and to bring that conviction home to the hearts of man¬ 
kind, did not choose out any of these open, glaring sins to taunt and 
confound them with. He went straight to that sin which is the root 
and source of all others, want of faith, the evil heart of unbelief. 

‘ When the Comforter is come , he will convince the world of sin, because 
they believe not in me? 

“ Now this is a sin, which the world till then had never dreamed of as 
such: and even at this day few take much thought about it, except 
those who have been convinced of it by the Spirit, and who therefore 
have been in great measure delivered from it. For those who have 
spent their whole lives in thick spiritual blindness, and whose eyes are 
still dark, cannot know what the blessing of sight is, and therefore can¬ 
not grieve at their want. They alone who have emerged into the 
light can appreciate the misery of the gloom under which they have been 
lying. Thus, until we have begun, to believe we cannot know what 
unbelief is, its misery, its sin, its curse. Want of faith is a sin of which 
no law accuses us. . . . Laws, inasmuch as by their nature they deal 
only with that which manifests itself outwardly, in deed or in word, 
take no cognizance of the sin of unbelief. Conscience, which only 
sounds when some positive sin is trampling upon it, is silent about 
this. Hence our need that the Spirit of God should graciously vouch¬ 
safe to convince us.” (“The Mission of the Comforter.”) 

NOTE E. 

Being led by the Spirit is a sequence of regeneration, and is there¬ 
fore an evidence that this momentous change has been wrought. “ For 
as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” 
This does not imply that every thought is suggested by the good Spirit, 
for we are still within bowshot of the devil, who may inject thoughts 
into our minds, and it is our business to acquire keenness of spiritual 


356 


THE GOSPEL OE THE COMFORTER. 


perception sufficient “ to discriminate between good and evil ” (Heb. 
v. 14). The leading of the Spirit implies- the weakness of a child 
needing a strong support, and an ignorance of the way of life through 
a thousand snares and pitfalls requiring guidance. We are to surrender 
our wills, affections and inclinations so completely as to desire to do 
nothing for merely selfish ends, but only for the glory of God, so far as 
we can under the illumination from above, confirmed by its accord¬ 
ance with the written word of God, which is ever to be a light to our 
feet. When a Christian finds himself following the Spirit to the neg¬ 
lect of the Holy Scriptures, he is in danger of getting into the devil's 
snare of fanaticism. The bones of many an unwary pilgrim are scat¬ 
tered about that fatal pitfall. 

NOTE F. 

BISHOP FOSS ON ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION. 

In an address delivered to a class of young ministers about to be ad¬ 
mitted to the conference, Bishop Foss said: “ I take it that every Chris¬ 
tian minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church recognizes that it is 
needful we retain and, as Methodist ministers and preachers of the gos¬ 
pel, preach the truths of the New Testament as taught by our church, 
and that silence for six months together on what the church believes 
and teaches on the subject of perfect love is just paving the way for 
irresponsible teachers to come forward and take the work out of our 
hands. If we are Christians after the New Testament type, let us preach 
those doctrines which, as a church, we believe are contained therein; 
and I think that upon the doctrines of perfect love and the cleansing 
from all sin by the blood of Jesus, it will be done in much the same way 
as John Wesley and Richard Watson preached them. Don’t let peo¬ 
ple listen to you for six months and then have to ask what you mean 
upon these questions. Having taken your ordination vows, preach per¬ 
fect love as the Bible puts it, and it won’t hurt much if put exactly as 
John Wesley teaches it. 

“ Lead the people up always to a higher life. If you do this, you 
will take the wind out of the sails of those who teach it in other ways. 
God bless them in so far as their work is right; but let our own hearts 
be warmed and our minds fired upon this question, and we shall lead the 
people to the heights and depths, and to know the love of God, which 
passeth knowledge.” 

WHAT METHODISM MIGHT HAVE DONE. 

Under the above caption that excellent journal, the Michigan Advo¬ 
cate , publishes a very significant article as follows: 


APPENDIX. 


357 


“ Though not a Methodist himself, the late Dr. Dale of England was 
a great student of Methodism, and a great admirer of many of our 
doctrines and usages. In 1879 he preached a sermon before the Wes¬ 
leyan conference at Birmingham, which produced a profound impression. 
Among other memorable utterances he declared that ‘ if Methodism had 
carried out its doctrine of entire sanctification in public as well as in 
private life, it would have effected the most profound and beneficent 
ethical revolution modern history has known.’ It seems to us that this 
statement is irrefutable. The world has need of a great church that 
dares to hold up boldly the very highest standard of righteousness, and 
to proclaim the glorious possibilities of divine grace in renovating soci¬ 
ety and in purging the hearts of all men from the power and guilt of 
sin. In some degree Methodism has done this, but not in the highest 
degree. Since the death of Wesley in England, and of Asbury in 
America, our official deliverances upon this subject have been compara¬ 
tively few and far between, and to some extent in an apologetic tone. 
Of late years neither our board of bishops nor the general conference 
has uttered a full, clear and ringing note upon this central idea of Chris¬ 
tianity. The whole glorious subject has been left too largely to the 
tender mercies of a few specialists, who have distorted it and misled 
many an earnest soul. It is a theme which should shine out from the 
church itself, from its official deliverances, from its conference sessions, 
from its regular pulpits, from its camp meetings and conventions, and 
should be held in correct relation to other doctrines, explained, com¬ 
mended, enforced, illustrated and practically exemplified by bishops, 
presiding elders, pastors, local preachers, official members, leagues, 
Sunday schools, missionary societies, in a word, by the complete and un¬ 
divided church. Had this been done through all our past, and were it 
done to-day, the‘profound and beneficent ethical revolution’ would be 
t- emendously under way, and society the world over would be reaping 
the gracious benefits of a higher spiritual ideal and a loftier moral 
standard. It was as a worthy object of endeavor, a sweet and attractive 
ideal, that Mr. Wesley himself most loved to present this doctrine. 
After giving the scriptural account of a perfect Christian, he was fond 
of saying: ‘By these marks the Methodists desire to be distinguished 
from other men; by these we labor to distinguish ourselves.’ He held 
up the ideal and urged his followers to do their best in striving to attain 
to it. To this method there can be no reasonable objection in any un¬ 
prejudiced mind.’* 

“ Why is it,” says Beck, “that people lay stress, almost exclusively, 
with a view to faith in Jesus, on this, that He bears the sin of the world, 
and neglect so much the other point, that He is able to baptize with the 


358 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Holy Ghost ? The apostles, on the contrary, lay stress on this gift of 
the Spirit as the source of a new life, a new disposition and walk, in 
which both the impression and the expression of God’s law are to be 
seen. The apostles and the prophets also treat the matter in its ethical 
aspect, whereas the traditional treatment represents the gift of the 
Spirit chiefly as a seal of forgiveness and adoption, and holds that from 
the joy of gratitude for this — that is from a mere psychological factor 
— the new life and strength are to spring. This view we find in our 
best authors. The Scriptures, on the contrary, lay stress on the new- 
creating and satisfying power of the Holy Ghost as the principle of all 
Christian disposition and personal activity (Rom. viii. 2). Christ’s sin- 
bearing only prepares the way for the coming of the Spirit (John vii. 39, 
Gal. iii. 13, 14); it is the foundation, but not the whole.” The answer 
to this question of Beck why sin-bearing is exalted above Spirit-baptiz¬ 
ing is; because (1) Most of the preachers are experimentally ignorant of 
the baptism of the Spirit; (2) They treat the pardon of sin as the 
principal benefit of Christianity; (3) Much of the prevalent preach¬ 
ing is either on the evidences, ethics or elements of the gospel, and little 
on its deeper experiences and higher life. It is therefore natural that 
the pulpit should be more largely stored with bottled milk than with 
“ solid food,” and that there should be many sermons on justification 
and few on sanctification. 

SANCTIFICATION BY THE SPIRIT NOT IN THE 
INTERMEDIATE STATE. 

Bishop Webb, who strongly advocates the advanced doctrine of sac- 
ramentalism, teaches that regenerate souls who have failed of sanctification 
by the Spirit before death will be entirely purified in Paradise. “ Dear 
brethren, for progress in holiness it is not necessary to assume a time of 
pain and agony. Souls may and will expand in the Paradise of God , in 
happiness and brightness, in light and refreshment. Progress in knowl¬ 
edge would imply progress in holiness. There is no necessity to assert 
the dogma of purgatory.” 

When discussing the agency which will produce this holiness, our 
good bishop, whose theme is the Holy Spirit, finds no proof text for an 
after-death purification by the “ sanctification of the Spirit,” but he inti¬ 
mates that “ progress in knowledge and holiness may possibly be learned 
from those who have gone before, or from the angels, or perhaps from 
some more direct action of Christ, and from the Holy Spirit. Some 
kind of sacramental action upon the soul that has been cleansed will 
still proceed in the near presence of Jesus Christ, ‘ for to him that over* 


APPENDIX. 359 

cometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the 
paradise of God.’ ” 

On a subject of so great importance it is better to imitate God’s 
perfect silence in the Holy Scriptures than to mislead any soul by our 
“perhaps” and “possibly.” 

“ The life of faith — progressive, increasing faith — is a motion in a 
straight line and not in a closed curve; it is not like an Irish penance 
around a sacred well, where one makes progress with the final result of 
being where you started, and perhaps ready for another revolution, as, 
indeed, it must appear to some Christians whose circle is a week and 
whose starting point a Sunday. Neither is it like the pilgrimage up 
Pilate’s staircase at Rome, in which the pain of going up on one’s knees 
is only varied by the discomfort of coming down again and finding our¬ 
selves just about where we were before, as it must appear to some good 
people who live the up-and-down life. It is an upward and onward life; 
on our knees, if you will, but upward and onward, and like the stairs in 
Ezekiel’s vision, still upward. And the Scriptures encourage us for¬ 
ward, bidding us leave the word of the beginning of Christ and go (not 
crawl) on unto perfection.” (J. Rendel Harris.) 

TWO EMINENT WITNESSES TO ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION. 

Dr. Wilbur Fisk, the charming, inspiring and subduing preacher, the 
founder of institutional education in American Methodism, a man com¬ 
bining the distinctive charms that endear to us the beautiful characters 
of Fenelon and Channing, Jonathan Edwards and John Fletcher, lived 
more than a score of years in the faith and exemplification of the sub¬ 
lime doctrine of Christian perfection as taught by Jesus Christ, St. Paul 
and St. John. He prized that great tenet as one of the most important 
distinctions of Christianity. With John Wesley he deemed this funda¬ 
mental truth — promulgated as a distinctive blessing almost solely by 
Methodism in those days — to be one of the most solemn responsibili¬ 
ties of his church, the most potent experimental proof of the divine 
origin of the gospel. When he received the baptism of this great grace, 
his purified heart could not sufficiently utter its thankfulness that he 
had been providentially kept within the church which clearly taught 
this pre-eminent doctrine, and that he had not yielded to the temptation 
to unite with other communions which offered larger salaries and higher 
social standing. 

His experience, which left its radiant impress on his daily life, was 
signalized by an overwhelming effusion of the Holy Spirit, depriving him 
of physical strength for several hours. It occurred at a camp meeting at 


360 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


Wellfleet, on August 10, 1819. As he was passing one of the Boston 
tents a lady invited him to stay in that tent. She then told him that on 
the way down an assurance had been given her that Mr. Fisk would 
receive the blessing of a holy heart at that meeting. “ Her words 
thrilled through me in an indescribable manner. I wept, I trembled, I 
fell. But Satan drew a veil of unbelief over my mind. They prayed for 
me, but all was dark, my heart was harder than ever. Thursday morn¬ 
ing we had a familiar conversation concerning heart holiness. ... I 
preached that day with considerable liberty; felt my mind more and more 
given up to the work, but thought if I had been through such struggles, 
and had obtained what I was seeking, much more remained to be en¬ 
dured. And I felt willing to endure anything. 

“ About the setting of the sun, word came that souls were begging 
for prayers in Brother Taylor’s tent [the celebrated ‘ Father Taylor ’ of 
the Seaman’s Bethel]. I went immediately in, and behold, God was 
there. We united in prayer, when one after the other to the number of 
four or five were converted. We rose to sing. I looked up to God, and 
thanked Him for answering prayer, and cried, ‘ Lord, why not hear 
prayer for my soul? ’ My strength began to fail while I looked in. faith. 
‘ Come, Lord, and come now. Thou wilt come. Heaven opens, my 
Saviour smiles, —glory ! glory ! O glory to God! Help me, my breth¬ 
ren, to praise the Lord.’ The scene that was now opened to my view I 
can never describe. I could say, ‘ Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee! 
I love Thee above everything. . . . Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all 
that is within me praise His holy name.’ ” When he knelt to offer this 
prayer he was in the very act of guarding against strange fires such as 
produced bodily exercises of which he had grave doubts. Then it was 
that he was smitten to the earth by the mighty power of the Holy Ghost 
filling all his being. When he had so far recovered his physical strength 
as to be able to be taken to his own tent, there was held another season 
of holy communion. Being unable to stand, he was supported by minis¬ 
terial brethren. His language and whole appearance had something in 
them more than human, indicating that Viis soul then glowed with ardors 
of love allied to those of angels. 

From this period Dr. Fisk dated his experience of perfect love. Be¬ 
fore that he had passed through seasons when he doubted the fact of 
his acceptance with God, his personal interest in Christ, and even the 
truth of Christianity itself. When in later years a young minister con¬ 
sulted him concerning just such doubts, Dr. Fisk told him that he had 
been delivered from such things forever at the Wellfleet meeting. They 
could no more dwell in the presence of the full development of the life 
of perfect purity, perfect faith, perfect love, perfect humility and perfect 
assurance than darkness can dwell in the presence of noonday. 


APPENDIX. 


361 


In his subsequent description of his experience in a letter to his sis¬ 
ter, he says: “ In the work of sanctification upon the heart there appear 
to be two distinct stages : one is to empty the soul of sin and everything • 
offensive; and the other is to fill it with love. 1. The strong man 
armed is bound and cast out. 2. The stronger takes possession. God 
was pleased, however, in my case, to empty and fill in the same moment.” 
(“ Life of Wilbur Fisk,” by Dr. George Prentice, pages 44-54.) 

Stephen Olin stands forth with commanding prominence in the his¬ 
tory of the American pulpit. It is thought by many that he was intrin¬ 
sically the greatest man, taken “ all in all ” that American Methodism 
has produced. It could be said of him as Rowland Hill said of 
Chalmers, “ The most astonishing thing about him was his humility.” 
He was the best example we have personally known — the writer was 
with him for six years — of that childlike simplicity which Christ taught 
as the essential condition for entering the kingdom of heaven, and Bacon 
declared to be equally necessary to those who would enter into the king¬ 
dom of knowledge. Like Dr. Wilbur Fisk, he was a personal example 
of St. Paul’s doctrine of “ Christian perfection,” as expounded by 
Wesley. At first he entertained doubts respecting it; but as he ad¬ 
vanced in life, and especially under the chastening influence of affliction, 
it became developed in his own experience. To the writer he said : “ My 
wife I had recently buried in Italy; my children were dead, my health 
undermined. My entire earthly prospect was gloomy indeed. God only 
remained. I lost myself, as it were, in Plim; I was hid in Him with 
Christ. Then I found, while wandering on the banks of the Nile in 
quest of health, without any process of logic, but by an experimental 
demonstration, ‘ the perfect love that casteth out fear.’ ” The marvel¬ 
lous grace that glorified his greatness with unsurpassed humility in 
great measure was the effect of this experience on a certain day in Egypt, 
and the result of the constancy of his faith in this crowning gift of God 
to believers in this world when they most need it. From the hour of 
that memorable spiritual transfiguration in the land of the pyramids the 
doctrine of full redemption through the sanctifying office of the Holy 
Spirit was very precious to him, and he looked with painful feelings 
upon anything designed to bring it into disrepute, or lower the standard 
of piety which it implies. This colossal mind had no difficulty with the 
question whether consciousness of inner purity is a sufficient proof ot 
entire sanctification. Three years after passing this milestone in his 
spiritual life, he made this record while too feeble to listen to a sermon : 
“I never before experienced such rest in Christ — such calm, unshaken 
faith, such ready, unreserved consent of the heart to the divine will, such 
an utter surrender of my own will to God’s. I cannot find, after much 


362 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


prayerful examination, that I have any disposition to do or to love any¬ 
thing that is not well-pleasing in His sight. I write this with great self¬ 
distrust, but as the result of self-examination. Such a state of affec¬ 
tions in a Christian so little advanced, and so specially undeserving as I 
feel myself to be, appears incredible to me, and I am constantly looking 
for the development of a still unsanctified nature.” This implies that 
such a development had not occurred. A similar testimony was given 
by President Mahan forty years after his personal experience that “ the 
blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin,” although he was naturally 
of a temper so quick and violent that his father predicted that in his 
ungovernable anger he would kill some one and expiate his crime on the 
scaffold. 


NOTE G. 

“ The moment you submit to God’s will and in your heart intelli¬ 
gently believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and accept Him as your 
Saviour, that moment God who justifieth at the instance of your Medi¬ 
ator will say, * Your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake; ’ and 
God the Holy Ghost will fulfil in your heart the righteousness of the 
law, certify by the stamp of His royal seal upon your heart that the 
death penalty of the law against you is cancelled, your sins forgiven, 
and the love of God, the essential principle of obedience, shed abroad 
in your heart by the Holy Ghost thus given unto you, and all attested 
by the Spirit’s direct witness, corrobated by the testimony of your own 
spirit, based on the conscious work and fruit of God’s Holy Spirit in 
your experience” (I John iii. 24, Eph. i. 13). (Bishop William 
Taylor.) 

Says Rev. Joseph Parker of London : 

“ Is it not a great honor to be decorated with God’s own seal, enti¬ 
tling us to be recognized everywhere in the universe as His adopted sons ? 
What are the decorations which princes bestow as tokens of merit, 
compared with this sign of the divine approval ? That great humorist, 
Sydney Smith, tells with what pride a little visitor of his allowed a 
large red wafer to be stuck in the middle of his forehead every night, 
signifying that he had behaved well during the day. Once only did the 
little fellow forfeit the wafer, and then went sobbing and broken-hearted 
to bed. With less reason have men striven for many a badge of dis¬ 
tinction. We all know what deeds have been done for the sake of the 
French Cross of the Legion of Honor. It is related that a medical 
student, who had risked his life in a case of contagious disease, smiled 
sadly when that famous decoration was laid upon his bed, saying, 


APPENDIX. 


363 


‘ It has cost me my life ! ’ If such value be put upon earthly honors, 
what is that worth which God alone can confer? No earthly coronet 
or crown approaches the glory of the seal of the Holy Spirit, the sign 
of adoption into the divine family.” 

“The present enjoyment of the Spirit is but an earnest , a gift before¬ 
hand, a pledge of the coming fulness. St. Paul speaks (Rom. viii. 23) 
of those which have the first fruits of the Spirit, and in his other 
epistles he uses equivalent expressions. What can be meant by such 
words but that the spiritual life is a continued progression, receiving 
with its widening capacities richer gifts of the wisdom and holiness of 
God. The Church is in its infancy as to valuation of spiritual bless¬ 
ing. It is, too, so much engaged in controversy that it can hardly be 
preparing itself for the completion of the holy promise. By mistaking 
the part for the whole, it is in danger of setting itself into premature sat¬ 
isfaction, as if it had exhausted the possibilities of prayer. The Church 
is too much engaged in that worst and most cankering of all world¬ 
liness, the elevation of one sect above another, and the angry defence 
of the transient conveniences of forms. What is delaying the out¬ 
pouring of the fulness of the Spirit ? There is indeed a still sterner 
inquiry which cannot be put without emotion, yet it may not be honestly 
suppressed : Is not the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church less 
distinct to-day than in the apostolic age ? Certainly there is not much ap¬ 
pearance of Pentecostal inspiration and enthusiasm in contemporary 
Christianity. Christianity is nothing if not spiritual. Why has not a 
Church eighteen hundred years old a fuller realization of the witness of 
the Holy Ghost than had the Church of the first century? Has the 
Church accomplished all the purpose of God and passed forever the 
zenith of her light and beauty ? ” (“The Paraclete,” pages 373—375 ) 

NOTE H. 

“Many a time nothing is wanting but to speak as to a soul already 
hungry and thirsty, or, if not consciously so, ready to hunger and thirst 
as soon as the bread and water of life are presented. If the problem is 
to get souls under sin inspired again, which it certainly is, then it is 
required that the preacher shall drop lecturing on religion and preach 
it, testify it, prophesy it, speak to faith as being in faith, bring inspira¬ 
tion as being inspired, and so become the vehicle, in his own person, of 
the power he will communicate; that he may truly beget in the gospel 
such as will be saved by it. No man is a preacher because he has 
something like or about a gospel in his head. He really preaches only 


364 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


when his person is the living embodiment, the inspired organ of the 
gospel; in that manner no mere human power, but the demonstration 
of a Christly and divine power. Such preaching has had, in former 
times, effects so remarkable. At present we are almost all under the 
power, more or less, of the age in w r hich we live. Infected with natu¬ 
ralism ourselves and having hearers that are so, we can hardly find what 
account to make of our barrenness.” (Dr. Bushnell’s “ Nature and the 
Supernatural,” page 516.) 

“ How insignificant all such labored disquisitions compared with the 
demonstration of the Spirit attending the preaching of one who has 
received an anointing from the Holy One! Alas! we do not quite know 
in these days whether any such action is to be expected. We are not 
quite certain but that the measure of the power of the Spirit received 
at conversion is all that can be looked for. O that the many would-be 
prophets who have enjoyed the highest educational advantages of the 
age, and are yet equal only to the very best * sounding brass,’ may 
come to believe that for God to be in their hearts and with their mouths 
is better than all the rest, and that until such an unction is poured 
upon them from on high, they are not the ministry of the Church which 
its Lord ascended to bestow.” (Rev. C. E. Smith’s “ Baptism in Fire.”) 

“ The Holy Spirit is able,” said Mr. Spurgeon, “to make the Word 
as successful now as in the days of the apostles. He can bring in by 
hundreds and thousands as easily as by ones and twos. The reason 
why we are not more prosperous is that we have not the Holy Spirit 
with us in might and power as in early times. If we had the Spirit 
sealing our ministry with power, it would signify very little about our 
talent. It is extraordinary grace, not talent, that wins the day. It is 
extraordinary spiritual power, not extraordinary mental power, that we 
need. Mental power may fill a chapel, but spiritual power fills the 
Church. Mental power may gather a congregation ; spiritual power will 
save souls. We want spiritual power. O Spirit of the living God! we 
want Thee. Thou art the life, soul of Thy people’s success. Without 
Thee they can do nothing; with Thee they can do everything.” 

That anointed woman, the Deborah of the nineteenth century, Mrs. 
Booth, thus preaches: “ It is the real, unadulterated Christianity we 
want, the Holy Ghost reign of Jesus Christ, and then you can have culture 
or do without it. I say it is a great delusion, and an insult to Jesus 
Christ, to make out that His reign needs modern culture to help it. A 
great deal of modern culture has done more to render us effete and 
powerless than all that ruffianism or heathenism ever did in the world’s 
history! Kingdoms are subdued through faith , not through intellect, 
not through learning, not through modern culture.” 


APPENDIX. 


365 


NOTE I. 

How rarely do we think of the wonderful humility of the Holy Spirit! 
This is the dispensation of His humiliation thus far, and probably for 
generations to come. In the Old Testament God the Father was re¬ 
vealed and disobeyed and slighted. Then the Son was manifested, and 
in His public ministry passed a year in obscurity, a year of public favor, 
and a year of malicious opposition ending in ignominy. Now is the time 
when the Holy Spirit is humiliated. He is entirely ignored by the world 
which denies His existence. He is neglected by many who profess to be 
His-friends. Few, indeed, so earnestly desire Him as to enthrone Him 
over their hearts. Many believers have vague, crude and unworthy con¬ 
ceptions of His glory and divinity. Instead of self-assertion, He keeps 
Himself in the background, desiring to give prominence to Christ and not 
to Himself. “This is the practical lesson : If we are not patient under 
opposition, ill at ease when unappreciated, and despondent when favor 
turns into hostility to our efforts to promote the holiness of Christians, it 
is evident that the Holy Spirit has not yet taken full possession of our 
hearts, and that we are dishonoring Him. You have not other gifts, be¬ 
cause He does not see fit to give them to you. They would spoil some 
other gift which you have. Now, if this is the true view of Providence 

— of the whole ordering of the world according to the purposes of God , 

— it does not matter what are our outward circumstances. Anna was 
preserved to old age to give thanks for the Lord's coming ; Simeon was 
kept alive to see the salvation of the Lord and sing the ‘ Nunc Dimittis; * 
and Elisabeth was kept barren for a long period of her life in order to 
bear her witness for the Lord in a different way from either. Each 
string in the great orchestra is under the finger of God the Holy Ghost , 
who touches the chord and brings out the tone that is wanted at the right 
time. How wonderful and tender the patience of the Holy Spirit striv¬ 
ing with men even before the flood! Think of His patience with its! 
He might bring out such harmonies from us, and we compel Him to hear 
such discords! 

“ This thought will help you to be patient, though all seem in disorder. 
Do not try to set the world right in five minutes. You cannot do it; 
God did not intend you to do it. You have a great ideal of what it ought 
to be, what it might be; but you have to be patient under this discipline, 
even as God is patient. Be content. Your neighbor may have what you 
have not, and you may have what he has not, because ‘ all these worketh 
that one and the selfsame Spirit , dividing to every man severally as he 
will(“The Presence and Office of the Holy Spirit,” Bishop Webb.) 

John Fletcher charitably suggests the following lame excuse — the 


366 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


best, however, that can be made — for the dishonor of the Holy Spirit 
by the silence of the pulpit on this vital theme: 

“ Some preach the cross of Christ; but they proclaim not the spiritual 
coming of the risen Saviour. If they even entertain a just opinion of the 
doctrine for which we plead, yet they are restrained from speaking fre¬ 
quently and freely upon the subject, because as many false Christians 
have rendered the dispensation of the Son contemptible to the eyes of 
deists; so, many vainly inspired zealots have caused the dispensation of 
the Spirit to appear ridiculous before sober-minded Christians. But, 
notwithstanding the reproach which many fanatics of various sects have 
brought upon this sublime part of the gospel, by mingling with it the 
reveries of a heated imagination, yet it will constantly be regarded by 
every well-instructed Christian as the quintessence of our holy religion.” 

Spiritual laymen that hold meetings are stigmatized as schismatics. 
“ If, in a parish that is unhappy enough to have a worldly minister, a few 
persons are happily converted to God and united together in Christ; if, 
having one heart and one soul, they frequently join together in prayer 
and in praise, mutually exhorting and provoking one another to love and 
good works, the unsympathetic pastor, instantly alarmed, imagines that 
these persons, for the purpose of forming a new sect, are destroying the 
unity of the church, when, on the contrary, they are but just about to 
experience the communion of saints. If zealous, he will labor to make it 
appear that these Christians who are beginning to love as.brethren are 
forming conventicles to disturb the order of the church. Such a minis¬ 
ter will give encouragement to companies of jugglers, dancers and 
drunkards, rather than tolerate a society which has Christian love for its 
object and basis.” (“The Portrait of St. Paul,” by J. Fletcher.) 

NOTE K. 

“ It imports us to know that through Jesus only can men entertain 
the hope of obtaining the gift of the Holy Ghost. Our prayer is a nul¬ 
lity without His prayer. 

“ He ascended that He might give a greater gift — greater by all that 
height to which He ascended. He stopped not at any of the grades 
set forth by the expressions ‘ principalities, powers, might, dominion.’ 
Not from any such elevation could He give a sufficient gift unto men. 
Legions of angels would have helped us little. He ascended up far 
above the highest of heaven’s hierarchy. In fact, it was to give Himself 
to us that He ascended on high, having previously descended to give 
Himself for us. 

“ Without the Holy Ghost we have no Christ. Christ, with all His 


APPENDIX. 


367 


infinite resources, with all His love, all His glory, is brought nigh to the 
individual believer and made a part of His being by the gift of the 
indwelling Spirit.” (George Bowen.) 

This is what Jesus means when He says, “It is expedient for you 
that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto 
you.” “ When I say it will be for your advantage, I do not mean that the 
Holy Spirit is greater than I am, or a truer friend to you, but that the 
Spirit will bring you and myself into a more intimate and blessed union 
than has been yet revealed in your consciousness. Though you have 
been with me these years, yet there is a moral chasm between us. You 
must painfully realize the very feeble amount of transforming influence 
that has been exerted upon you by one who is manifestly God in the like- 
" ness of men. 

“ The desire for sanctification exists in you, but your new and ele¬ 
vated conception of holiness only makes you the more sensible of your 
great moral deficiencies. If miracles could have given you the victory 
over sin you would now be the noblest of men. Yet are you still sadly 
aware that pride, ambition and worldliness have power over you. 

“ It is one thing that the image of God should have been placed 
before you ; it is a very different thing that you should be changed into 
that image. You feel the need of some unknown power by which the 
minds of men may be rendered obedient to the truth, something beyond 
miracles, something beyond the power of a holy example. Is there not 
some power in God which can subdue that hostility by which we are 
hindered from being transfigured through the testimony of a holy life ? 
There is. I ascend on high that the Comforter may come into your 
utmost selves, and that rivers of living water may flow forth from you, 
making the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose.” (George Bowen.) 

“The baptism of the Spirit appears to have been such a blessing 
that those who received it were fully conscious of possessing it. Not 
that they all doubted of their own piety before, and that this blessing 
assured them of their acceptance. It seems plain that Peter and others 
were sure that they loved the Saviour before the events of the Pentecost 
occurred. The lips of Christ had told His disciples that they were clean 
while as yet the Paraclete was not in them ; and an angel had assured 
Cornelius of his acceptance before Peter preached to him the gospel 
and the Holy Ghost fell on them that heard the word. If they were 
conscious of acceptance before this, how much more when the Spirit of 
adoption in their hearts cried Abba, Father! ‘I think,’ says Calvin, 
‘that the apostle used this participle (crying) to express greater confi¬ 
dence ; for doubt does not suffer us to speak boldly, but holds the jaws 
as it were compressed, so that the half-broken words hardly come forth 


368 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


from a faltering tongue. On the other hand, crying is a mark of security 
and of confidence, not at all of vacillating.’ ” (Dr. J. Morgan.) 

“ In no age, possibly, have Christian churches been so well equipped 
for effective service for Christ as they are now. Like marvellous struc¬ 
tures of ingenious machinery, our churches stand forth, endowed with 
wealth, enriched with education, culture and social influence, possessing 
splendid church edifices, elaborate music and rituals, sound in creeds, 
confessions and covenants. And yet, alas ! these numerous and admira¬ 
ble channels carry but drivelling streams of that divine energy that made 
the early churches such centres of evangelizing power, where they were 
composed of disciples whose faith stood not in * the words which man’s 
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth.’ The crying 
need of the age is not more of such churches or more or better appli¬ 
ances, but a universal baptism of the Holy Spirit. Were this given, the 
Church could, with her present resources, give the gospel to the world 
within the next decade.” (F. M. Mills, D. D.) 

“ I believe the Church, with all her external prosperity, is to-day in 
greater peril than in any of the eighteen centuries of her history. Her 
very prosperity is her peril. She reminds me of a church in Canada 
which brought in a report after this fashion: ‘ We have had a prosper¬ 
ous year. All our pews and sittings are taken. We have a surplus of 
^50 in the treasury. We have had no conversions, but it has been a 
very prosperous year.’ The world has come into the Church in such a 
fashion that the Church has become composed of one half wholly 
worldly people, and the other half of worldly holy people, so that if you 
do not have a chance to consult the church roll, you cannot tell who be¬ 
longs and who not. How many people in our modern churches practi¬ 
cally know whether there is a Holy Ghost or not ? How many of them 
have ever risen to the conception that their bodies are temples of the 
Holy Ghost ? How many churches have a genuine Holy Ghost prayer 
meeting? It is either a lecture by the pastor or asocial meeting.” * 
The remedy is both divine and human. The Spirit must be poured out, 
and godly men be ordained to the ministry, converted people do the 
singing, regenerate men and women be the officiary, and a discipline en¬ 
forced excluding from the Lord’s table all who bring reproach on Christ 
by wicked conduct. 

“ If we believe He is a person in the Trinity, let us treat with Him as 
a person, apply ourselves to Him as a person, glorify Him in our hearts 
as a person, dart forth beams of special and peculiar love to and con¬ 
verse with Him as a person. Let us fear to grieve Him, and also be¬ 
lieve on Him as a person.” (Goodwin.) 


• Dr. A. T. Pierson. 


APPENDIX. 


369 


“As Adam’s life is reproduced in every child born into the world, so 
the new, spiritual life of the second Adam is reproduced in every one 
born of the Spirit. Our life is the reproduction of Christ’s spiritual 
life in His people. The new birth connects us with the second Man, 
who, by the Holy Spirit, gathers His people under Him by a self-com- 
municating act.” ( Smeaton.) 

“It is one thing to have the Holy Spirit; it is another to have Him 
completely possessing us. No one can be regenerated without having 
Him; but there is the other side of it when He fills our entire being and 
has His way with us.” (Kelly.) 

“ ‘ Spirit,’ in the requirement to worship in spirit and in truth, de¬ 
notes that deepest element of the human soul by which it can hold com- 
" munion with the divine world. It is the seat of self-collectedness, the 
sanctuary wherein the true worship is celebrated. Rom. i. 9: ‘The 
God whom I serve in my spirit.’ ” (Godet.) 

Chronologically a believer may be living in the dispensation of the 
Spirit, and yet experimentally he may be living before the day of Pente¬ 
cost. Objectively he may be in the Spirit because He has been poured 
out, yet subjectively he may be living in the letter because he has no 
personal acquaintance with the Spirit. 


NOTE L. 


“ This fountain of the Spirit is not limited to the apostles; it is not 
surrounded by an iron fence with a narrow gate to which only the priestly 
class has the key. Jesus precluded any such monopoly when He said: 
‘ He that believeth on me,’ learned or ignorant, rich or poor, bond or 


free. 


It is a gift which all may share, 
From prince to peasant rude ; 
It glows not more in palace halls 
Than in dark solitude. ’ ” 


(Bishop W. Pinkney.) 


“ Christ, in the person of the Holy Spirit, is in His Church in all her 
pilgrimage through this world unto the end. When historic episcopates 
and ecclesiastical establishments have withered and ceased to bear fruit, 
this indwelling Chirst can bud with new ministries and bring forth in 
new missionary enterprises. There is a true apostolic succession through 
which the Holy Spirit is communicated from generation to generation. 
This succession has rarely been found confining itself to the historical 
and sacerdotal channels, but it may be traced rather in what Harnack 
calls ‘ certain undercurrents of tradition ’ which have flowed out of 


370 


THE GOSPEL OF THE COMFORTER. 


sight from age to age. It is usually only a little company who are 
called into the upper room to receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost and 
fire; but they receive it for the whole Church, and by a kind of spiritual 
laying on of hands it is communicated from one to another till multitudes 
share the blessing. 

“ In the doctrine of tactual succession there is not only a kind of 
cheapness and pettiness, but especially a foreshortening of the Spirit’s 
arm, as though the consecrating touch depended on the intervention of 
some visible ecclesiastic. On the contrary, the hands of the Paraclete 
have often stretched across a century or generation and set apart a 
ministry by foreordination long before any bishop or presbytery has 
moved to set him apart by ordination.” (“ The Holy Spirit in Missions,” 
by Dr. A. J. Gordon.) 

“Some well-intentioned people, but feeble in grace, drink down to 
the level of forgiveness, but not down to glory and the receiving of the 
Spirit; they do not realize that 4 he that drinketh of the water that I 
shall give him shall never thirst; ’ they do not overcome the world ; one 
has almost to make a fresh text for them. This is the defeat wherewith 
they are worsted, even their little faith.” 

“We may, indeed, get dying grace, and hold a consecration meeting 
upon our dying beds, but it is not death that consecrates, nor the grave 
that sanctifies and cleanses from all sin. We shall begin the next life 
pretty much where we left off in this.” (J. Rendel Harris.) 

NOTE M. 

The irremissible sin, it is thought by some writers, can be com¬ 
mitted only by the backslider from the spiritual life. He may not be 
an avowed apostate from Christ, but may maintain a profession of Chris¬ 
tian faith. Says Rev. W. W. Andrews : “ The redemption of the world 
is as real an act of God as its creation, and the movements of the Holy 
Ghost are never absent where the Father and the Son are working. 
And it is step by step against these threefold mercies that the sin of 
man is suffered to show itself. Beginning with the transgression of His 
ordinances as the creator and lawgiver, it reaches a higher stage in 
‘denying the Lord that bought them,’ and attains its consummation 
and climax in that sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no 
forgiveness. This triple form of sin shows the wonderful power of 
man in setting itself against all motives and influences, and in effect¬ 
ing his destruction, although created in God’s image and redeemed by 
the blood of His Son and made partaker of the heavenly life by the 
renewing of the Holy Ghost. The heathen dishonored God as revealed 


APPENDIX. 


371 


to them in the ordinances of nature; the Jews rejected Him as mani¬ 
fested in the crucified Jesus, who gave His life a ransom for their sins; 
but the greater guilt of the Christian Church will lie in driving the 
Spirit from His dwelling-place by her pollutions, and turning like * the 
sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.’ ” 















































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